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The Marx-Engels Reader SECOND EDITION T his revised and enlarged edition of the leading anthology provides the essential writings of Marx and Engels-those works necessary for an introduction to Marxist thought and ideology. Among the major features of the revision are selections from the "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right," additional selections from the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and other early Marx writings, the Gnmdrisse (more than any competing text), and additions to Capital and other late writings by both Marx and Engels. The volume is so arranged as to show both the chronological and the thematic development of the two great thinkers. Selections range in coverage from history, society, and economics, to politics, philosophy, and the strategy and tactics of social revolution. Each selection is intro duced by Professor Tucker and, where possible, is presented in its entirety. Part I presents the writings of the y oung Marx, the works which have aroused so much interest and caused so much debate in recent y ears. Part II includes works critical of capitalism. In Part III are the works which outline the program, strategy, and tactics of the revolutionary movement. Part IV includes writings on society and politics in the nineteenth century, not only European but Asian and Russian as well. The concluding section, Part V, presents the later writings of Engels, in which Marxism was popularized and sy stematized for the benefit of the masses. The
Marx- Engels Reader contains an interpretive general introduction
that traces and analy zes the development of Marxist philosophy ; head notes to each selection; a full chronology of major events in the lives of Marx and Engels; a note on texts and terminology (new in this edition); and an index. The
Editor
Robert Tucker is professor of politics at Princeton University. He re ceived his Ph.D. from Harvard University and has also taught at Indiana University. Among his many publications are Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx; The Soviet Political Mind, Revised Edition (Norton); The Marx-Engels Reader, Second Edition (Norton); Stalin as Revolutionary,
1879-1929: A Study in History and Personality (Norton); The Lenin Anthology (Norton); and Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation (Norton).
NEW YORK
•
LONDON
ISBN 0-393-09040-X
Books by Robert C. Tucker Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx The Soviet Political Mind The Great Purge Trial
(co-editor)
The Marxian Revolutionary Idea Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879-1929: A Study in History and Personality The Lenin Anthology
(editor)
Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation
(editor)
THE
MARX-ENGELS READER SECOND EDITION
Edited
by
ROBERT C. TUCKER PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
w
.
\V·
NORTON & COMPANY New York· London
w. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 101I0 W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 10 Coptic Street, London, WClA lPU
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title: The Marx-Engels reader.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.
Communism--Collected
works.
2.
Socialism-Collected
works.
I. Marx, Karl. 1818-1883. Selections. English. 1978. II. Engels, Fried rich, 1820-1 895. Selections. English. 1978. III. Tucker, Robert C. HX39·5·M374 1978
. 335·4
77-16635
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA G 1 8 9 0
ISBN 0-393-09040-X
Contents
Preface to the Second Edition
lX
Chronology: The Lives of Marx and Engels Introduction Note on Texts and Terminology
Part I.
xv XlX XXXlX
The Early IVIarx
Marx on the History of His Opinions (Preface to
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) Discovering Hegel (Marx to his father) To Make the World Philosophical (from Marx's doctoral dissertation) For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing (Marx to Arnold Ruge) Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's
Philosophy of Right On the Jewish Question Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's
Philosophy of Right: Introduction Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts -of 1844 Critical Marginal Notes on the Article "The King of Prussia and Social Reform" Alienation and Social Classes (from
3 7 9 12 16 26 53 66 126
The Holy 133
Family) Society and Economy in History (Marx to P. V. Annenkov)
136
143 146
Theses on Feuerbach The German Ideology: Part I
Part II.
The Critique of Capitalism 203
Wage Labour and Capital
The Coming U nheaval (From
Philosophy) v
The Poverty of
vi
Contents
.
Clas� Struggle and Mode of Production (Marx to Joseph Weydemeyer ) The
Grundrisse
221
294
Capital, Volume One Capital, Volume Three •
Crisis Theory (from
Part III.
Theories of Surplus Value)
439 443
Revolutionary Pr ogram and Strategy
Manifesto of the Communist Party Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League Inaugural Address of the Working Men's Intern a tional Association Economics and Politics in the Labor Movement (Marx to F. Bolte) Against Personality Cults (Marx to W. Blos) The Possibility of Non-Violent Revolution (the Amsterdam speech) �.
220
Critique of the Gotha Program Afterthe Revolution: Marx Debates Bakunin Circular Letter to Bebel, Liebknecht, Bracke, and Others The Tactics of Social Democracy (Engels' Introduction to Marx's
The Class Struggles
in France, 1848-1850)
469 501 512 520 521 522
525
542
549 556
Part IV. Society and P olitics in the Nineteenth Century Speech at the Anniversary of the
People's Paper Working-Class Manchester (from The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844)
The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850 The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte The Civil War in France On Imperialism in India On Social Relations in Russia Europocentric World Revolution (Marx to Engels; Engels to Karl Kautsky)
577 . 579 --.1 586 594 618 653 665 676
Contents
.
vn
Part V. The Later Engels: Elaboration and Popularization Speech at the Graveside of Karl Marx
681
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
683
On the Division of Labour in Production (From
Anti-Diihring) Anti-Diihring)
On Morality (From
718 725
Versus the Anarchists (Engels to Theodor Cuno)
728
On Authority
730
The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State Letters on Historical Materialism Bibliographic Note
Index
734 760 769 771
Preface to the Second Edition
A knowledge of the writings of Marx and Engels is virtually indis
pensable to an educated person in our time, whatever his political position or social philosophy. For classical Marxism, as the thought of Marx and Engels may be called, has profoundly affected ideas about history, society, economics, ideology, culture, and politics; ,indeed, about the nature of social inquity itself. No other in tellectual influence has so powerfully shaped the mind of mocferh left-wing radicalism in most parts of the world. Through classical Marxism, moreover, the left is linked to a greater intellectual tradi tion extending into the eighteenth-century French Enlightenment, German post-Kantian philosophy, English political economy, and early-nineteenth-century
European
socialism.
Not
to
be
well
grounded in the writings of Marx and Engels is to be insufficiently attuned to modern thought, and self-excluded to a degree from the continuing debate by which most contemporary societies live insofar as their members are free and able to discuss the vital issues. This book offers the original writings needed to acquire a thor ough grounding in Marxist thought, together with introductory notes to each selection, a chronology of the careers of the two men, and a concluding bibliographic guide to some· of the literature about them and their thought. I have aimed to place between the covers of one volume all or nearly all of what could be considered "the essential Marx and Engels." Since their published writings and correspondence fill more than forty volumes, such an undertak
ing involves difficult problems of selection. In resolving them I have followed certain established traditions in the anthologizing of
Marx and Engels, but also have sought to break fresh ground. The
main innovations are the inclusion of the principal early writ Ings of
Marx and substantial portions of Capital and the Grundrisse.
The inclusion of the early Marx is a response to the revolution that has taken place in "Marxology" in our time owing to the pub lication in the
1930S of some previously unknown
writings of
Marx's formative period. I shall say more about these writings and
their significance in the Introduction. The outcome of the new Marx scholarship, as I shall argue, is a deeper and clearer under standing both of Marxism's origins in post-Kantian German phi losophy and of its fundamental meaning. The new scholarship ix
Preface to the Second Edition
x
has also made plain the basic underlying continuity that exists between the
early
and later Marx.
For
these
rea sons,
among
others, the most im portant of the early writings deserve to be repre sented in any collection o f the essential Marx and Engels, and have been included here.
Marx without Capital is Kant without The Critique of Pure Reason or Darwin without The Origin of Species. Even though he >
:
'
�
'completed only the first volume of it, leaving the second and third volumes in unfinished form to be edited and published by Engels after h e died,
Capital was
Marx's great work. \Vhen he compl eted
and published Volume One i n 1 8 6 7 , he described it in
friend as the book "to which
a
letter to
a
I have sacrificed my health, my happi
ness and my family." \Vhen read closely and in the context o f the remainder of his writings,
Capital
turns out to be n o t simply
l\1arx's major treatise on political economy, but his principal work on man, society, and government-indeed, the fullest exp ression of his en tire world-view. Clearly, there can be no "essen tial Marx and Engels" with
Capital
missing,
yet the book
is forbidding on
account o f its great size-about eight hundred pages-and its com plexit y. Feeling that token solutions o f this problem through the inclusion mainly of Marx's prefaces to
Capital
are unsatisfactory, I
have tried to resolve it by putting together sufficiently extensive extracts to convey the book's basic argument, the parts of greatest general interest. The hospitable reception of this volume s ince its appearance five years ago has encouraged me to prepare a revised and en larged edi tion to meet more fully the needs o f teacher and student in the var ious disciplines for which Marxist thought is important. No changes have been made in those respects in which the book seems to have proved s ound: the five-part plan of organization; the idea of combining the thematic with the chronological in arranging the material; the integ ration of the early philosophical Marx with the later writings of both Marx and Engels; the inclusion o f
tal;
Capi
and the premise that Engels, in some measu re, is quite indis
pensable-that a general anthology of classical Marxism cannot properly meet the needs of student and teacher unless it is
Engels
a
Marx
reader. On the other hand, the material added in the new
edition i s mostly -but not exclusively-by Marx. The Marx portion of the reader, already predominant in the first edition, has been sub stantially increased in this one. Additions are of two kinds: the inc l u sion of works, or material from works, not represented in the first edition; and the addition o f more material t o w o r k s t h a t w e r e included i n less t h a n t h e desirable measure. A small n umber o f excisions, in no case involving a work as a whole, have been made i n order to help accommodate volumi-
Preface to the Second Edition
xi
nous additions without unduly increasing the book's b u l k and cost. Of the two parts that have been most heavily enlarged, one is Part I ( "The Early Marx" ) ' where I have added selections from Marx's commentary of 1843 on Hegel's
Philosophy of Right
(Marx's
most extended work of strictly political anal ysis); the important sec tion of the
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. of 1844
on
"The Meaning of Human Requirements"; selections from th e s tu dent t\larx's letter to his father in 1837, from Marx's doctoral dis sertation, from the article "Critical Marginal Notes," and from l\larx's early exposition of h istorical materialism in his
1846 letter
to Annenkov.
The other part enlarged in greatest measure is Part II ("The Cri
tique of Capitalism" ) , featuring Marx's economic writings . The chief innovation is the inclusion of extensive extracts from the
Grundrisse,
including the whole of its introductory part . Additions
have been made to Volume One of
Capital:
the section on the
"Industrial Reserve Army" and the chapters on "The B uying and Selling of Labour-Power" and "Modern Industry and Agriculture ." The famous unfinished concluding chapter on "Cl asses" h a s been added to the short selection from Volume Three of
Capital, and Theo
Marx's d iscussion of economic crises in his s t i l l little-known
ries of Surplus Value
has been added fo r th ose with a specialized
interest i n Marxian economics . Other, brief addit ions to Part II are
the concJ uding section of
The Poverty of Philosophy,
presenting
Marx's 1847 preview of the violent revolut ionary breakdown of capi talist society, and Marx's 1852 statement to Wedemeyer on what he considered his main innovation i n the theory of hi story.
Labour and Capital in somewhat
Anti-Diihring
Wage
has been preserved, although it is now given
condensed
form.
Engels'
revealing
discussion
in
o n "The Division of Labour in Production," with
added material, has been moved t o Part V ("The Later Engels " ) . Part
III
("Revolutionary
Program
enlarged by three short selections :
and Marx's
Strategy") speech of
has
been
1872 in
Amsterdam allowing for the possibility of a peaceful roa d to socia.l� ism in certain countries; his d iscussion in a letter to B olte in
18i1
0.£ the way in which economic iss ues should figure in revolutionary working-class politics; and his rebuttal of Bakunin's criticisms 6f Marxism (this occurs in Marx's conspectus, written in 1874-75; of Bakunin's work
Statehood and Anarchy ) .
A classical historical pamphlet now included i n Part and Politics in the Nineteenth Century" ) , Marx's
gles in France 1848-1850,
IV ("Society
The Class Strug
is represented in extracts containing its
passages of general bearing and interest. The key sections of
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and The Civil War in France are retained although some mainly narrative parts h ave been
xii
Preface to the Second Edition
deleted. A short new section entitled "E uropocentric World Revo l u tion" presents thoughts of �Iarx and Engels on the problematic
relation o f the predicted Euro p ean socialist revolution to future
developments in the non-European parts of the worl d . Lastly, a key passage from Marx's letter of
1881 to Vera Zasul ich has been a dded
to the selection "On S ocial Relations in Russia." The principal additicn i n Part
V ( "The Later Engels" ) i s mate
rial on the past, present, and future of the family from Engels'
Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State.
The
This material
constitutes classical Marxism's major statement on family history and the position of women. Finally,
I have added material in 1894 com
Engels' letters on historical materialism, including his
ments to Starkenburg on the role of "great men" in h istory. The book's editorial apparatus has been, where necessary, rev ised and expanded. Rev isions have been made in the head notes, as needed, to make them more informative. A passage has been added to the Int roduction. A "Note on Texts and Terminology" has been especially prepared for the new edition. Some minor revisions have been made in the Chronology. Th e Bibliographic Note has been amplified to include some new titles which have appeared in the intervening years and a listing of som e books b y major l\larxist thinkers after Marx and Engel s.
My thanks g o first o f all to two friends who have been instrumen tal in making this book a reality. My colle ague Stephen Cohen con vinced me of the need for the kind of comprehensive anthology of Marx and Engels th a t the book seeks to provide, and later was gen erous with his advice on many aspects of the work and gave me th e
benefit of a searching appraisal of my proposed choice of materials.
James Mairs of W. W. Norton & Company w a s an unfailing source of encouragement, support, editorial judgment, and practical wis. dom on all matters affecting the book .
I am also indebted to Emily Garlin for her edito rial assistance; to
Ronald Rogowski for translating Marx's letter to Arnold Ruge; to Norman Levine for critical comments and suggestions on the ch oice of materials; to
Steven Marcus for suggesting the inclusion of
Engels' description o f working-class Manchester; to Lorna G i ese for her able typing o f portions of the manuscri p t; and to Jerome Nestor, Anthony Trenga, and B rian Kemple for help as research assistants . S ome of the ideas e m bodied in the new edition h av e come from persons who read the book in its first edition and thoughtfully brought one or another omission o r imperfection to my attention.
Among those who did so and to whom I wish to express gratitude are Gert
H. Muller, Caroline B. Pierce, Dennis Dalton, G ary
Preface to the Second Edition
xm
Young, and Yasuyuki Owada. I am likewise indebted to Mihailo Markovic for his helpful adv ice. Two colleagues exceptionally knowledgeable in areas covered b y this b o o k , Thomas Ferguson and P e t e r
C. Stillman, were kind
enough, in response to invitations from the publisher, to prepare searching, systematic critiques of the fi rst edition and suggestions for addit ions and rev isions in the second. If this volume is as improved now as I believe i t t o be, much o f the c r edit goes to them, along with m y deep thanks. Neither bears the responsibility for wha t inadequacies remain.
Unless otherwise indicated the texts are translations tha t have appeared in editions published by the Foreign Languages Publishing House o r Progress Publishers in Moscow. Likewise, the editorial notes, save where specifically indicated, are those supplied by the original editor or transl ator.
ROBERT C. TUCKER
The Lives of Marx and Engels
(May 5) Karl Marx born at Trier, Prussia (now part of \Vest Germany) . (November 28) Friedrich Engels born at Barmen (in corporated into \Vuppertal, 1929; now in West Ger many) . 1830-35
Marx studied in Trier high school.
1834-37
Engels studied in El berfeld high school.
1835
Marx entered University of Bonn, faculty of law.
1836
Marx transferred to University of Berlin, faculty of law.
1836-38
Marx studied law, philosophy, history, and English and I talian languages at Berlin. Marx studied Greek philosophy and wrote doctoral dis sertation, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophies of Nature. Received Ph.D. from J ena, then moved to Bonn hoping to secure teaching position at University of Bonn. Sent to Bremen for business training, Engels worked as unsalaried clerk in an export business. Continued studies independently and wrote articles for press. Abandoning the idea of university teaching, Marx wrote articles for the Young Hegelian Deutsche Tahrbiicher and the Rheinische Zeitung, an opposition newspaper published in Cologne. Became editor of Rheinische Zeitung in October, 1842. Moved to Cologne. Engels served in Household Artillery of Prussian Army, attended lectures at University of Berlin, and joinecl. circle of Young Hegelian radicals, "The Free." Wrote articles for Rheinische Zeitung. (November) First meeting between Marx and Engels, in office of Rheinische Zeitung in C ologne. Engels stopped there on way to England. In Manchester to complete his business training III firm of Ermen and Engels, Engels studied English life and literature, read political econo mists, joined Chartist movement, published in Owenite paper The New Moral World, wrote "Outlines of a Critique of Political Econ omy."
xv
The Lives of Marx and Engels (March 17) Marx resigned as editor
of Rheinische after imposition of strict censorship on paper by Prussian government.
Zeitung
(June
19)
Marriage of Marx to Jenny von \Vestphalen.
Marx undertook with Arnold Ruge to publish Deutsch Franzosische Jahrbiicher and worked on founding of the journal. (summer) Marx in Kreuznach worked on critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. (November) Marx moved to Paris. (fall and winter) Marx wrote "On the Jewish Question" and "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction" for Jahrbiicher. (end of December) Heinrich Heine.
Marx became
acquainted
with
Marx studied history of French Revolution and began systematic study of classics of political economy. (January) Marx received articles from Engels for pub lication in Jahrbu.cher. Double issue of Jahrbiicher published in Paris under editorship of Marx and Ruge. Publication of Engels' "Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy" in it led to correspondence between Marx and Engels. (April) Marx accused by Prussian government of high treason and lese majeste for his articles in Jahrbu.cher and ordered arrested in event of crossing Prussian border. (July) Marx became acquainted with Proudhon. (March-August) Marx wrote materials later published as
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.
(April-August) Engels gathered materials for a social history of England and on condition of English working class. (around August 28 ) Returning from Manchester to Germany, Engels visited Paris for second meeting with Marx. Commencement of their collaboration. Engels, in Barmen, wrote Condition of the Working Class in England (184 5 ) . Marx and Engels collaborated in writing The Holy Family (1845 ) . (January) Banished from Paris by order of French gov ernment, acting under Pruss ian instigation, Marx moved to Brussels. (May-J une) Marx wrote "Theses on Feuer bach." (April) Engels joined Marx in Brussels.
The Lives of Marx and Engels
1 864-71 1867
xvii
(summer) Marx visited Manchester with Engels, return ing to Brussels in late August. Marx and Engels wrote The German Ideology. Marx renounced Prussian citizenship under pressure from Pruss ian government. Marx wrote The Poverty of Philosophy (1847 ) . Engels took part in First Congress of the Communist League in London . In November both Marx and Engels took part in Second Congress, also in London. (December) Marx, in B russels, gave series o f lectures later published as Wage Labour and Capital (1849 ) . (February) Communist Manifesto published in London . Marx and Engels took activc parts in revolution of 184849 in Germany, coediting Neue Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne. (J une) Engels served as \Villich 's adjutant in unsuccess ful Baden rising. ( fall) Marx and family settled down in London. Marx resumed h is economic studies i n British Museum. Engels took up residence in Manchester, where he worked f or twenty years in firm of Ermen a n d Engels, helping to support Marx as well as himself. Marx began an eleven-year period as regular contributor . to New York Daily Tribune. Marx wrote The Eighteenth B rumaire of Louis B ona parte (18 52 ) . Engels wrote articles on "Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany." Latter appeared in New York Daily Tribune under Marx's name. Marx and Engels wrote articles for New American En cyclopedia, Engels' on "Th e His tory of Artillery." Marx prepared man uscripts on criticism of political economy, the Grundrisse (1939-41 ) . Marx wrote A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859 ) . Marx wrote Theories o f Surplus Value. Mary B urns, with whom Engels had lived for many years, died. Founding of International \Vorking Men's Association in London . Marx active in affairs of General Council of I nterna tional Working Men's Association. Publication of Capital, Volume One.
xviii
The Lives of Marx and Engels l'.Iarx made some revisions on the texts of Volumes Two and Three of Capital, most of which were completed by 1867.
1871
Marx wrote
The Civil War in France
1870-95
Engels lived in London.
1872
Appearance of Russian edition of
1874-80
Engels worked intermittently on
Capital. Dialectics of Nature. Anti-DUhring in book form.
1878
Publication of Engels'
1881
Death of Jenny Marx.
1883
(March 14) Death of Karll'.Iarx.
1884
Engels wrote
1885
Publication of Volume Two of
1886
Engels wrote
and the State
(1871).
The Origin of the Family, Private Property (1884).
Capital, edited by Engels. Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Class ical German Philosophy (1886).
Publication of English translation of Volume One of edited by Engels. Publication in New York of first English edition of The Condition of the Working
Capital,
Class in England in 1844.
1888
(August-September) States and Canada.
Engels
traveled
in
the
United
Engels took part in the founding of the Second Inter national. Engels attended International Socialist \Vorkers' Con gress in Zurich. Elected honorary president of Congress. Publication of Volume Three of Engels. (August 5) Death of Engels.
Capital,
edited by
Introduction
There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining the luminous summits.
-KARL MARX, 1872
I
Marx, like many writers, published considerably less than he wrote. His early writings, presented in Part I of this book, include some that were published in 1844, soon after he wrote them, and some not destined to appear in print until the 1930s. The most important of the latter group are the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and The German Ideology (Part I of which appears to have been one of Marx's contributions to this book written jointly by himself and Engels) , and the
Grundrisse. The German Ideology in the brief history of his opinions that he gave in the Preface to A Contri bution to the Critique of Political Economy. As for the 18 44 manu l\Iarx explained the non-publication of
scripts, which were a very rough first sketch of his theory of history in notes and draft chapters of a projected treatise on the "criticism of political economy," these remained in a raw, unfinished state among his private papers. The papers came into Engels' possession after Marx's death in 1883, and went to the leaders of the German Social Democtatic Party after Engels' death in 1895. After the Rus
sian Revolution, the l\Iarx-Engels Institute in Moscow acquired photocopies of the manuscript materials. Its director, the noted
Marx scholar David Riazanov, took charge of the editing of the unpublished early writings, and, thanks largely.to his labors, these writings finally came out in the 1920S and 193os.1 Later, RiazanOv, like so many other prominent Russian Marxists, died in Stalin's purges. Although reactions were somewhat slow in coming, the publica tion of the previously unknown early writings was
a
pivotal event in
the history of Marxism and of scholarship about Marxism. Because they reflected the genesis and growth of the Marxist system of 1. For further particulars on t h e publishing history, see the Note on Texts and Terminology, below. xix
Introduction
xx
th o ught in th e m in d of its principal creator, th e and Pa rt I of
The German Ideology
1844 man u scripts
illumin ated th e origins of th e
system, its relation to post-Kantia n German philosophy, a n d the meaning of some o f Ma rx's ba sic concepts . On ly then, in fact, did it become possible to trace in depth and detail, stage by stage, the emergence of Marxism. The manner of Marxism's emergence was a subje ct that Marx a n d E ngels left in some obscurity a lth o ugh they dealt with it now and th en, for example in Engels'
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.
B ut w h a t they h a d to say was enigmatic. In Marxism, which h a s its foun datio n in what they variously called the "m ate rialist concep tion
of history"
or
"historical materialism,"2
s ocialist th ought
h ad-they sai d-graduated from its earlier "utopian" stage a n d beco m e "scientific ." Wh ereas t h e "utopian" socialists h a d vis ual ized a socialist reo rgan ization of society as someth ing that
ought
to be realized, the materialist conception of h istory had conclu sively d e m o nstrated that the human historical process was moving towa rd a worldwide a n ticapitalist revolution that would ush er in socialism or communism
( Marx a n d Engels ten ded to use these
two wo rds interchangeably). Yet th is "scientific socialism" of Marx a n d Engels was n ot in a di rect line of descent from the teachings of the classical utopian socialists, the ea rly-n in eteenth-century fathers of mo dern socialist th ought:
Henri
de
Owen . Its immediate
Saint-Simon,
inte�h!CtuC\1
Cha rles
Fourier,
and
Robert
source \vas, rather, German ph ilos ophy, p a rti cularly that of Hegel The materialist con ceptio n of his tory h a d originated in an
� �-sion
of Hegel's idea list conception of
history, an intellectual operation wh ereby th e Hegelia n dialectic was, as Engels expressed it in one of his later writi ngs, "placed 2. The notion that Marxi sm has its foundation in "dial ectical materialism," a general world-view o f which histori cal materialism is the application to h u man history, is a later growth partic u larly associated with R ussian and subsequen tly Communist Marxism, and is n o t the classical Marxist positi on. For Marx the prime subject of Marx ism was human history, hence histori cal materialism was the foundation of the teaching. M oreover, historical material ism was itself dialectical in that the h u man h i storical process showed a revolutionary pattern of de velopment through opposition and con flict. To this it must be added that Engels, who more than Marx was in terested in the progress of natural sci ence in the nineteenth century, did give an initial impetus to the later emer gence of a Marxist "dialectical mate-
rialism" by his speculations on the presence of dialect ical laws in natural p rocesses. He began but never com pleted a book on this subject, the man uscript of which was first published in the twentieth century under the title Dialectics of Nature. The term "diaIRc tical materialism" was put i nto cur rency by the Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov in one of his writings of the late nineteenth century. For a long while the authoritative version of the viewpoint of Communist Marxism on this subject was the essay by. Josep h Stalin, "Dialectical and Historical Materialism," published as a part of Chapter Four of the History of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks). Short Course ( M o scow: Foreign Languages many edit io n s) .
Publishing
Ho u s e ,
I ntroduction
XXI
upon its head; or rather, turned off its head, on which it was stand ing, and placed upon its feet."3 This only rep eated what Marx himself had written in 1873 i n the Afterword to the second German edition of Cap ital, where he observed that thii:ty years ear lier he had criticized the mystifyi ng side of Hegelian d i ale ctic and added: "The myst ification which dialectic suffers in Hegel's hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious man ner. \iVith him i t i s standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again if you would discover the rational kernel within the mys ,"
"
,
tical shell." So Marx and Engels. The en i g m a mentioned above will now be apparent. Social theo ries normally do not originate through turning metaphysical systems of thought "right side up again ." How could Marx's materialist con ception of hi story arise by means of an inversion of Hegel's idealist conception ? Hegel represents history as the self-realization of spirit (Geist ) or God. The fundamental scheme of his theory is as fol lows . Spirit is self-creative energy imbued with a drive to become fully conscious of itself as sp i rit Nature is spirit in its self objectification in space; history is spirit in i ts self-objectification as culture-the succession of world-dominant civilizations from th e ancient O rient to modern E urope Spirit actualizes its nature as self-conscious being by the process of knowing. Through the m i n d of man, philosophical man i n particular, the. world achieves con sciousness of itself as s pirit This process involves the repeated over coming of spirit's "alienation" (Entfremdung) from itself, which takes place w hen s p irit as the knowing mind confronts a world that appears, alb e it falsely, as objective, i.e., as other th an spirit . Know ing is recognition, whereby spirit destroys th e illusory otherness of the ob j e cti ve world and recognizes it as actually sub j ective or selbs tisch. The process terminates at the stage of "absolute knowledge," when spirit is fi nally and fully "at home with itself in its other ness," having recognized the whole of creation as spirit-'c Hegelianism itself being the scientific form of this ultimate seH� knowledge on spir it' s part Such is the argument of Hegel s gr�at work The Phenomenology of Mind (18°7) , on which he e1a ho rated further in his later writings. A philosophical tour de force this, but what does it have to do with Marxism? How could the materialist. conception of his tory and "scientific socialism " be Hegelian in. derivation? Marx and Engels asserted such a relationship in terms too clear for misunder.
.
.
.
3. Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected
'
Works, 2 vols. (Moscow: Foreign Lan guages
II,
p.
Publishing
387.
House,
1962), vol.
Introduction
XXll
standing. Engels, to cite a further example, wrote the following about Hegel's system: Abstract and idealist th o ugh it was in form, yet the development o f his thoughts always proceeded pa rallel with th e devel opment of world history and the latter is really meant to be only the test o f the former. If, thereby, the real relation was inverte d a n d sto o d on its head, nevertheless t h e real content entered every where into th e philosophy; all th e more so since Hegel-in con tras t to his disciples--did not parade ignorance, but was one of the finest intellects of all time . . This epoch-making concep .
.
tion of history was the direct theoretical premise for the new materialist outlook . 4 Hut nowhere did Marx a n d E ngels adequately explain just how .
.
.
Hegel's concepti on of history had served as the "direct th eoretical premise" of Marxism . The materials needed for clarification of the matter did, h owever, exist-in Marx's desk drawer. He a lluded to th is fact when he recalled in the to
Capital
1873
Aftenvord
th at th irty years earlier he h a d criticized the "mystifying
side of Hegelian dial ecti c ." His reference could have been to either or both of two of his still-unp ublished early writings: an u n fi nished commentary of of th e
1844
1843
o n Hegel 's
Philosophy of Right,
or the section
manuscripts entitled "Criti que o f Hegel 's Dialectic and
Philosophy in Ge neral ." Now th at these and other early writings of Marx are available, Marxism's Hegelian derivation has ceased to be a mystery . Marx and Engels were correct in saying that Hegelian ism had been th e "direct theoretical premise" for the mate rialist conception of h isto ry. So great were th e philosophical complexities of th is
tra nsition,
however,
that the two men
u n dersta ndably
refrained in th eir later years from offering a detailed explanation to th e i r socialist foll owers, who in the i r majority were unversed a n d uninterested in pos t-Kantian Germ a n philosophy. B riefly, Ma rx created his theory of history as a conscious act of
translation
of Hegel's theory into what he, Marx, took to be its
valid or scienti fic form. In th is he followed the procedure of th e German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, a uth or of
Christianity (1841 ) ,
The Essence of
wh o h a d argued th at Hegel's philosophy could
reveal scienti fi c truth if subjected to "tra nsformational criticism." This consisted in th e
inverting
of its principal propositions, mean
ing that o n e transpos.ed subject a n d predicate in the m . For Hegel m a n is spirit ( or Go d) in the process of self-alienation and self real ization, i.e., m a n presents himself in hi story as self-alienated Go d . The truth, says Feuerbach, is just th e revers e . Instead of seeing man as self-alienated God, we m ust see God as self-alienated m a n . That is, when·m a n , the human species, projects an id ealized 4 . From
Marx's
a review, written in 1859,
A
Contribution to
of the Critique
of Political Economy.
Italics added.
Introduction
xxm
image of itself into heaven as "God" and worships this imaginary heavenly being, it becomes estranged from itself; its own ungodly earthly reality becomes alien and hateful . To overcome this aliena tion man must repossess his alienated being, take "God" back into himself, recognize in man-and specifically in other human individ uals-the proper object of care, love, and worship. Such is the basic argument of Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity. Transformational criticism of Hegel yields the theme that religion is a phenomenon of human self-estrangement. The conception of history as the self realization of God or spirit through man is transformed into the conception of history as the self-realization of the human species via the detour of alienation in the sphere of religion. Hegelian idealism undergoes a metamorphosis and becomes Feuerbachian "humanism ." For Marx, as for others on the Hegelian left in Germany, Feuer bach's "transformational criticism" of Hegel was an intellectual innovation of epochal importance. The message that Hegelian theory has truth-value if one applies the method of inversion came with a ring of revelation. It meant that one could go on making good use of Hegel while escaping the toils of his colossal and seem ingly so otherworldly system. One could discover social reality, the reality of the human predicament in history, by turning Hegel "right side up." Man was not the personification of spirit; rather, spirit was the thought-process taking place in man. But as Feuerbach had shown, this thought-process as depicted by Hegel was a reflec tion of the actual movement of history . The Hegelian picture of sp irit alienated from itself was, on this reading, simply the philos opher's upside-down and hence "mystified" vision of the real social process, namely, man's alienation from himself in the material world. Furthermore, man's alienation could be traced out in other spheres than religion. The state, for example, was a sphere of human alienation, and could be exposed as such by applying to Hegel's political philosophy the same method of transformational criticism that Feuerbach had applied to his general theory of his" tory . Marx undertook this work in 1843 in a critical commentary on Hegel's Philosophy of Right. He did not complete the commen tary, but sum med up the most important parts of its message in two articles published in 1844. In one of them, the essay "On the Jewish Question," he portrayed the political life of man as analo gous to the religious life, as treated in The Essence of Christianity. Just as man projects the idealized attributes of the species into h is image of a transcendent deity, so he projects social power into a separate sphere-the state-which dominates him. Here, however, the resulting division of man against himself is not a matter of the imagination simply but of institutional reality; and the escape from
Introduction
xxiv
p olitica l a lienation, u n like that from religious a lienation, requires a real revolution-a collective act whereby the citizens repossess the socia l p ower externa lized in state institution s . App lying "transformation a l criticism" to Hegel's p olitical p hilos op hy,
Marx inverted
the
Hegelian p roposition
between the state a n d "civil society"
on
the
relation
(burgerliche Gesellschaft,
by
which Hegel meant the realm of private economic endeavor). Civil society was not an outgrowth of t h e state,
as in Hegel's view;
rather, the state was an outgrowth of civil society. The primary sp here of m an's being was not his life a s a citizen of the state b u t rather h i s economic l i f e i n civil society; this w a s t h e foundation on which all e lse rested. Having reached this position via the critical commentary on Hegel's
Philosophy of Right,5
Marx was app roa ch
ing the end of the strange roa d leading him to the formulation of the materialist conception of history. Now h e posed for himself the task of investigating the economic life a s a sp here of human self a lienation. In p ursuit of this aim h e undertook a n intensive study of Adam Smith and other classical theorists of political economy. In these economic writings, read in conjunct ion with Hegel, he hop ed to find a key to t h e understanding of man ' s alienation as a producer of material good s . At some poin t in the cou rse of t hese studies he was struck by the thought that was to p rove the corner stone of the Marxian system:
the
fundamental
human
reality
reflected in a mystifie d w a y in Hegel's philosop hy of history was
the
reality of man's a lienation in economic life. This was the under lying master theme of the p ap ers that we now know as the
nomic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. D ecip hering
what
content of Hegel's
he
conceived to be
Phenomenology of Mind,
his own concep tion
the
hidden
Eco
meaning
Marx here formulated
of history as a process of self-development of
t h e human species cu lminating i n com munism. Man, according to this conception, i s essentially a producer; and material production is the primary form of his producing activity, industry being the exter na lized productive powers of the sp ecies. In the course of his his tory, which Marx described as a "history of production , " a world of created objec t s gradually arises arou n d m a n . Original n a t u r e is over laid with
a man-m ade or "anthropological nature . "
And Marx
believed t h a t this was t h e true or scie n t i fi c restatement of t h e Hegelian conception. For h a d n o t Hegel seen the history o f t h e world a s a production- history o n t h e p a rt of spirit? H i s error h a d b e e n to mystify the process b y treating the productive activity as
spirit
activity. To move from mystification to rea lity, from philoso
p hy to science, on e h a d on ly to turn Hegel on his head. Then it 5. On this see Marx's own testimony in the P ref ace to A Contribution to
the Critique oj Political Economy,
p.
4, below. For the commentary itself, see pp. 16-25, 53-65, below.
Introduct ion
xxv
appeared that the Hegelian image of spirit creating a world was simply a philosopher's distorted picture of the reality of history, namely, that man-working man-creates a world in material pro ductive activities over the centuries. I nevitably, therefore, Marx later named his transformed Hegelianism the "materialist concep tion of history . " Still following Hegel's basic scheme, Marx i n the 1844 manu scripts visualized the human history of production as being also a history of estrangement (Entfremdungsgeschichte). Man's nature, he postulated, was to be a "free conscious producer," but so far he had not been a ble to express himself freely in productive activity. He had been driven to produce by need and greed, by a passion for accumulation which in the modern bourgeois age becomes accumu lation of capital . His productive activity had always, therefore, been involuntary; it had been "labour." And since man, when he pro duces involuntarily, is estranged from his human nature, labour is "alienated labour."6 Escape from alienated labour finally becomes materially possible in the stage of technological development created by modern machine industry. The way of escape lies in the revolutionary seizure and socialization of the productive powers by the proletariat. Rep ossessed through revolution of his organs of material p roduction externalized in industry, man will at last be able to produce in freedom. Human self-realization will be attained on the scale of all humanity . So Marx defined communism in the 1844 manuscripts as "transcendence of h uman self-alienation" and "positive humanism." He saw it as the real future situation that Hegel had dimly adumbrated at the close of his Phenomenology, where spirit, having attained a bsolute knowledge, is beyond all alienation and fully "at home with itself in its otherness ." \Vorking man would no longer be confronted by an alienated world of objects app ropriated as private p roperty. He would dwell in aes thetic communion with an "anthropological nature" transformed into the common possession of all . Man would realize his human nature as a free conscious producer, engaging in a variety of creative activities no longer actuated by the drive to accumulate property; Such was Marxism in its original formulation in Marx's manu scripts of 1844, for which Hegelianism was indeed the direct theo retical premise. This "original Marxism" was the foundation of the mature Marxist system, the matrix of the materialist conception of history as encountered in the later writings of Marx and Engels. We have evidence of this in the fact that there was no significant hiatus in time between the initial statement of the Marxist position i n the manuscripts, which Marx comp leted in August of 1844, and 6. This is a main t heme o f the important section of the 1844 manuscripts
on
estranged
70-81.
labor.
See
below.
pp.
XXVl
Introduction
the systematic formulation of the materialist conception of history that he gave in P art One of
The German Ideology.
He laid out
some of the underlying main themes of the latter in the spring of
1 8 4 5 in a set of notes that have come down to us under the title
"Theses on Feuerbach ." He also expounded the theory to Engels, with whom he met in Brussels at that time. Marx had the theory of history "ready worked out" by then, reca11ed Engels in a note to the 1 890 edition of the
Communist Manifesto .
The theory that
Marx was able to set forth orally and in writing by the spring of 1 84 5 must have been the one blocked out in his manuscripts of the previous year . As the reader wiU see, there are numerous differences between these two early versions of Marxism. The German philosophical ter minology, and therefore also the philosophical foundations, are far more clearly apparent in the manuscripts than in Part One of
German Ideology.
The
The concept of man 's alienation, which plays so
central a part in the first formulation, is no longer an
explicit
cen
terpiece of the theory as reformulated. Now we are in the more impersonal world of Marxian social theory as made familiar in the later writings, with ' their characteristic emphasis upon class struggle ' as the driving force of history. The ethical themes so strikingly present in the manuscripts, such as the notion of "posi tive humanism" as the goal of human history, are not so salient now . A11 these changes have presented problems for contemporary scholarship in Marx studies, and should certainly not be dismissed as of small importance. But neither, on the other hand, should they be
overemphasized,
as though there
were some profound rift
between original and later Marxism . It appears, for example, that much of the content of the idea of man's alienation lives on in the mature Marx in the meaning that he and Engels assign to the con cept "division of labour ." The moral theme in �Iarxism arising out of its view of alienation as an evil, and something destined to be abolished by a final worldwide revolution, remains present ·in later Marxism's representation of the division of labour as an evil that has plagued man all through 'his history, in different ways, and win be ended by the proletarian revolution . Scholarly opinion is inclin ing, and in my opinion wi11 increasingly incline, to the view that there is an underlying basic continuity of thought not only between the 1 844 manuscripts and
The German Ideology,
but more broadly
between the early Marx and the Marx of the later writings culmi nating in
Capital,7
But the significance of the now-discovered early Marx goes far 7 . The account given here of the origin and development o f Marx's thought follows the lines o f t h e interpretation presented in greater length and detail,
with supporting evidence, in Robert C.
Tucker, Philoso phy and Myth in Karl Marx (New York : Cambridge Univer sity Press, 1 9 6 1 ; 2 nd ed., 1 9 7 2 ) .
Introduction
xxvii
beyond these questions of the intellectual development of Marxism and its exegesis. The early writings are of very considerable intrinsic interest. The 1 844 manuscripts disclose a strangely modem youth ful Marx speaking in accents almost of an existentialist philosopher, a Marx alive to psychological themes of interest to many in the second half of the twentieth century . Som e European existentialists have recognized a kindred m ind in Marx, and one influential thinker of the psychoanalytic school has made use of some of the ideas of the manuscripts in formulating a neo-Freudian ph ilosophy of man.B Many in Russia and Eastern E u rope, rea cting against Stalin ism and the dreary orthodoxy of official Communist Marxism, have found support and inspiration in the early Marx for a new, morally aware, critical Marxism-a Marxism that sees the possibility of alienation not only in bourgeois societies but in those officially called "socialist ." For these reasons, among others, the early writ ings that :Marx left unfinished and unpublished are widely read today. II
The German word Kritik, which may be translated as either "criticism" or "critique," is a symbol of great importance for com prehending the m ental world of Marx and Engels . It was the watchword of the circle of Young Hegelians with whom they were associated at the end of the 18 305 and the beginn ing of the 1840S. Marx interpreted it in a spirit of radical negation of social reality, as reflected in h i s letter of 184 3 to Arnold Ruge calling for a "ruth less criticism of everything existing ." In h i s essay of 1 8 44, "Contribu tion to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right," he elaborated his concept and program of criticism and pointed to the proletariat as the real social force -destined to carry out criticism's verdict by overthrowing the existing order. In The Holy Family: A Critique of Critical Criticism ( 1 84 5 ) , Marx and Engels proclaimed their break with the Young Hegelian group. B ut no break with the idea of Kritik was intended . I n addition , a s we have seen, Marx learned from Feuerbach a specific technique of critical thought involving the use of Hegel . By means of this technique Feuerbach had produced a criticism of reli gion as a phenomenon of human self-alienation . Taking up the crit ical enterprise in this sense, Marx produced, first, a criticism of th e state as a phenomenon of human self-alienation , and then, in his 8. I am referring t o Erich Fromm's Man for Himself (New Y or k : Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1 94 7 ) . See also his autobiographical study, Beyond the
Chains of Illusion : My Encounter with Marx and Fre.ud (New York : Simon &
Schuster, 1 9 6 2 ) . For a discussion of Marx from an existentialist viewpoint, see F. H . Heinemann, . Existentialism
and
the
Modern
Predicament
York : Harper & Row, 1 9 5 8 ) .
(New
xxym
Introduction
manuscripts o f 1 844, the beginnings of what he called a "criticism of political economy. " Engels, who acquired a deep interest in economics still earlier through working in his father's firm and being e xposed to economic realities at the site of its English branch in Manchester, preceded Marx in undertaking a criticism of politi cal economy. He produc ed an essay, "Outl ines of a Critique of Political Econom y," which appeared, along with Marx's essays on the Jewish question and the Hegelian Philosophy of Right, in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher of 1 84+ Marx's references to this essay in the prefaces to his 1 844 manuscripts and A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy testify to the influence that i t had upon h im a t t h e t i m e i t appeared . "This political economy or science of enrichment born of the merchants' mutual envy and greed," wrote Engels at the beginning of. his 1 844 essay, "bears on its brow the mark of the most loath some sel fishness . " The essay addressed itself to this argument through a systematic analysis of the categories of the "science of enrichment . " In conclusion Engels referred to the factory system and announced his future intention to "expound in detail the des picable immorality of this system, and to expose mercilessly the econom ist's hypocrisy which here appears in all its glitter ."9 The projected work did not materialize, but Engels did publish in 1 84 5 , based on his English observations, T h e Condition o f the Working Class in England in 1 844. Strictly descriptive though this work was, it was obviously concerned with exposing the "despicable immoral ity of this system . " 1 It was a work of Kritik. Elsewhere I have suggested that Marx was a writer who spent the greater part of his life writing one important book under a number of different titles. In the 1 844 manuscripts 1).e set out to produce a Kritik of political economy, seeking to demonstrate, in terms of the categories of political economy, man's alienation as a worker in bourgeois society. Having achieved in these papers a sketch of his e n tire world-view, he set the manuscripts aside b u t in a few years time returned to th e task he had posed for himself. Wage Labour and Capital, written in 1 847, was a sort of prospec tus for the full-scale Kritik of political economy that h e was deter mined to wri te. In 1 8 5 9 he published a not very successful begin ning of the work under the title A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Meanwhile, in 1 8 5 7- 5 8 he had written a huge new set of manuscripts that would one day be published under the 9 . Karl M a r x , T h e Economic a n d Phil osophic Manuscripts of 1844, edited
by D irk J. Struik
(New York : Inter national Publishers, 1 9 6 4 ) , p p . 1 9 7 , 2 2 6 . Engels' "Outlines o f a Critique of P o l i t i c a l Economy" appears here as a n
appendix. 1 . See i n this connection t h e selection included here under the title "Work " ing-Class Manchester" (pp. 5 7 9- 5 8 5 , below ) .
Introdu ction
XXIX
title Fundamentals of the Critique of Political Economy .2 When he finaUy completed the work and published it in 1 8 67 under the title of Capital, he subtitled it Critique of Political Economy. In short, Capital was the form in which Marx finaUy finished the book on the criticism of political economy that he h a d o rigi na U y under taken in his manuscripts of 184 4 . The idea of Kritik is, then, a great unifying theme running through the wr iti ngs of classical Marxism, and a key to the continu i ty of the thought of Marx and Engels from their youthful philo sophical writings to the productions of their mature years. Although they devoted a great deal of energy to economic analysis and contributed writings-especially C a pit a l that constitute a sig nificant and influential chapt er in economic thought, they did so not as pol itical economists in the ordinary sense but as critics of pol itica l economy. As such they wrote from a position that we can variously describe as moral, norma tive, or philosophical. It would be a great mistake, therefore, to think of the writings gathered i n Part II of this . volume as belonging t o a compartment ca11ed "Marxian e conom ics," separate from the remain der of their thought. These writings a re in the mainstream of their thought about society and h istory, their revolutionary outlook, and their socialism. The serious student of Marx must get to know Capital as Marx's major book about man. As the attentive reader of these pages will discover, i t is the book, too, into which he poured h is views on a m isce11any of topics of g e neral interest, such as educa tion, the family and its future, the implications of modern techno logical development, and so on . For all its tortuous com plex it y and abstruseness of argument, Capital ( I refer here to Volume One ) is fairly simple i n basic theme an d design . It could be viewed as an eight-hundred-page elab oration of the passage from The Holy Familr� speaking of private property and the proletariat as opposites forming an antagonistic "whole" that is moving toward its own ultimate dissolution because of private property's inherent tendency to generate more and, mOre proletariat, which in turn is " conscious of itself as a dehumaniza tion and hence abolishes itself. " In Capital the antagonistic "whole" is presented a s wage labour ( Lohnarbeit) or, alterna tively, as the capital-labour relationship-this be i n g the relationship of production constitutive of capitalism itself as a mode of -
2. Grundrisse der K rit ik der politi schen {jkonomie (Moscow, 1 9 3 9 -4 1 ) .
The full i n Karl
text i n English i s available Marx, Grundrisse : Founda
t ions of Economy,
translated by Martin Nico-
the
Critique
of
Political
laus (New York : Vintage Books, 1 9 7 3 ) . ( Se e below, p p . 2 2 1 - 2 9 3 , for selections. ) 3. See the selection en titled "Alienation and Social Classes," below.
xxx
Introduction
p rodu ction .'"
For
Marx this relationship of
production is the
"basis" of bourgeois society, over which a rises the institutional and ideological "superstructure." The real subject of the book, in his mind, is bourgeois society. In wage labour, the argument runs, the worker sells to the capi talist employer the only commodity that he possesses, his labour power, and receives in recompense a wage reflecting this commodi ty's "value ." Since, on M a rx ' s assumptions about value, the value of any commodity is equivalent to the amount of average necessary labour time in corporated in it, the value of one day's labour power as a commodity is the monetary equivalent o f the amount of resources required to keep the worker alive and at work and able to reproduce his kind, i .e., it is a subsistence wage . B u t when p u t to use by the capitalist for a day, this labour power is capable, Marx reasons, of producing a certai n amount of value over and above its own value. This Marx calls "surplus value"
( Mehrwert ) ,
a nd he
characterizes capitalism as a system geared to the maximizing of surplus value through intense-and ever-intensifying-exploitation of labour power to the utmost extent su fferable by "that repellent yet elastic natural barrier, man ." Further, surplus value has two forms . "Absolute surplus value," meaning the excess of new value created in a day over the value of the labour power bought by the capitalist, can be in creased by lengthening the working day itself. " Relative surplus value," arising out of improvements in technology that reduce the necessary labour time invested in labour power, can be obtained by mechanization of p roduction processes and there with the degree of specialization in the factory, so that the worker becomes a detail labourer performing ever more min u te and monot onous operations. The capitalists a re driven willy-nilly by the imper atives of their situation to accumulate capital by increasing surplus value along both these lines, so that "in proportion as capital a ccu mulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment h igh or low, must grow worse ." The "absolute general law of capitalist accumula tion," as �larx christens it, "establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding
with
accumulation
of
capita l .
A ccumula tion
of
wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degrada tion, at the opposite pole . . . . " Th is conclusion of the a rgument points to the violent breakdown of the "whole" that Marx heralds toward the end of the book, where he speak.s of the coming "exproc p riation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people ."
Capital
was written by an angry man, a n d one can ha rdly read it
without sensing the indignation that he felt i n the face of the phe4. On Marx's use of the terms "mode o f production" and "relations of production," see Robert C . Tucker, The
Marxian York : 1.
R e v olutionary
W . W . Norton,
Idea (New 1 9 6 9 ) , chapter
Introduction
xxxi
nomena with which he was concerned . The great Kritik of political economy is a work of analysis and description, but also of moral condemnation and protest. The word "alienation" may be m issing, but the theme is not .5 Capital's proletarian is still The Holy Fami ly's "dehumaniza tion which is conscious of itself as a dehum aniza tion and hence abolishes itself ." What was called "alienated labour" in the manuscripts of 1 844 appears here s imply as "wage labour ." Now the object of study is subjected to endless analysis in terms o f the labour theory of value and to lavish documentation out of the annals of British factory inspectors ' reports, but it is the same object, and the viewpoint t a ken toward it is also the sam e . The basis o f the moral condemnation o f wage labour i s not that the wages are too low,6 but that wage labour by its very nature dehum anizes man . This means, for Marx, that it defeats his natural human urge toward spontaneous productive activity, converts his free creativity into forced labour and drudgery, and frustrates his human need for a variety of occupations . The latter theme-the division of labour or occupational specialization as an evil-is a sa lient one in Capital; and the h istory of the evolution of the modem factory system that l\larx gives in Part IV of the book is not pre sented out of an interest in economic history per se but as a means of describing the horrifying extremes that the division of labour attains under the "machinofacture" developed during the Industrial Revolution . As he expresses his view here, " . . . constant labour of one uniform kind disturbs the intensity and flow of a man's animal spirits, which find recreation and deligh t in mere change of activ ity ." That th is was Engels' view a s well, and more generally that the condemnation of division of labour as an evil belongs to the core of class ical Marxism, is well illustrated in the section of Engels' Anti-Diihring that has been included in the present volume unde r the heading "On the Division of Labour in Production." In their later writings, then, Marx and Engels are still writing from the standpoint summed up in Marx's 1844 manuscripts as "positive humanism ." They are writing on behalf of a socialism that means to them not a new system of distribution ( though tha t, too, they are sure, will come about ) but a new mode of productive activity that is to be achieved through the revolutionary liberation 5. D i r k J. Struik has pointed out that Marx does not completely renounce the term "alienation" in h i s later economic writings. I t makes a reappearance in the Grundr;sse a n d i n the following passage f r o m Capital, Vol. III, P a r t I, chapter 5, section 1 : "The relations of capital conceal indeed the inner connec tion .cof the facts) in the complete i n difference, exteriorization and aliena tion in which it places the worker i n relation to the conditions o f t h e reali-
( Th e ECD nomic and Philosophic 111anuscripts of 1844, p. 2 3 5 ) .
zation o f his own labour"
6 . For Marx's scorn o f the distributive
orientation i n socialist thought, see particularly his comments in The Cri tique of the GDtha Program, pp. 5 2 8 - 5 3 2 , below. On the problem o f dis tributive justice i n Marx, see Tucker,
The
Marxian
chapter 2 .
R e volutionary
Idea,
Introduction
xxxii
of h u m a n prod uctiveness from the b o n d s of fa ctory t o i l for the accumulation
o f "s u rp l u s val u e ." They a dvanced
no
p a rticula r
n a m e for this new mode of production, b u t described i t in various places as the free activity of human beings prod ucing i n coopera tive associatio n . The socialization of the means o f production was not, on this view, the essence of socialism or comm unism, b u t only i ts preconditi o n . III
Altho ugh born o f German philosophy, Marxism from the begin ning eschewed philosophy's con templative attitude toward the world a n d adop ted a s its own the standpoint of the "un i ty of theory a n d practice ." In the fa miliar words o f Marx's eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, "Th e philosophers have only world, in vario us ways; the point is to a
change
interpreted
the
i t . " Apart from bein g
critical comment on former philosop hy, this statement had a bio
graphical m e a n ing. Not content with theorizing about a revolution i n the abstract, Marx and Engels concerned themselves deeply with the strategy a n d tactics of a socialist revolution, the organizing of revolutionary activi ty, the poli tics of world-change . In the ma terials gathered i n Part III of this volume, and also in the political j o u r" nalism represen ted i n Part their activit y.
IV,
we see the reflection of this side of
In Marx's a n d E ngels' own minds, i t should b e added, there was no clear demarcation line between their theoretical work and their practical and orga nizing activities. For various reasons they would hardly have agreed with the sta tement of their future Russian disci ple, Lenin, that "witho ut a revo l u tionary theory there can b e no revolutionary m ovem en t."7 Th ey th o ught of a revo l u tionary move ment as
a
spontaneous phenomenon of mass rebelliousness genet
ated by conditions of existence th a t people find intolerable, hence not something dependent on a revolutionary theory for its emer gen ce. Both The German Ideology a n d the Communist Manifesto offer unequivocal testi m o n y on this p o i n t . B u t on the other hand, Marx and Engels believed that a correct revol utionary theory c o u l d powerfully
assist
a
revolutionary m o v e m e n t b y providing explana
tions and orienting its members to the movement's proper ends a n d m e a n s . Their o w n theorizing appeared to t h e m a n h istoric case i n p o i n t . The Marxist theory w a s simply t h e contem porary proleta rian revolutionary movement-an ongoing or incipient phenomenon in every industrial society-come to full p rogrammatic conscious ness. 7. What Is to Be Done ? , i n The Lenin Ant hology, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York:
W.
W.
Norton,
1975),
p.
1 9.
By "movement" in this context Lenin meant an organized political movement led by a political party.
Introduction
xxxiii
It was the p rospectus of the revolutionary process taking place in bourgeois society, explaining its underlying causes and foretelling its preordained future course and outcome . By their theorizing as such, therefore, they were actively influencing historical events . Such, at any rate, was their view . An obvious implication of this reasoning was that everything pos sible should be done to disseminate knowledge of the Marxist revo lutionary theory and secure its acceptance by the organized workers' movement. The Communist Manifesto is an outstanding example of such effort. Marx's powerful polem ical tract on The Civil War in France, an account of the Paris Commune and its suppression, may also be seen in this light. To explain the Paris Revolution of September, 1 87o-May, 1 8 7 1 , according to the canons o f Marxist theory and assess its historic meaning in Marxist terms was to show Marxism's cogency as a mode of understanding contemporary his torical reality and thereby to enhance its influence on educated minds . So successful was the pamphlet in achieving this purpose that one later historian of the socialist movement dates the wide spread impact of Marxism from that time .8 Much of the political journalism of Marx and Engels appears to have had, at least in part, a similar motivation . They propagated Marxism by seeking to demonstrate its applicability to current events . In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis B onaparte, to take a particularly important example, Marx recounted the recent political history of France in a Marxist frame of reference. The result in this instance, as in some others, was a work of journalism that has taken its place also as a classic of Marxist historiography. The nineteenth century was a birth-time of socialist theories and programs . Since Marxism at mid-century was only one of numerous available versions of socialist thought, its propagation by Marx and Engels was a highly competitive enterprise . In The German Ideol ogy they attacked and ridiculed the doctrines of their fellow German "true socialists ." A year later, in 1 847, Marx published The Poverty of Philosophy, a polemic against the theories of the French socialist and anarchist thinker Pierre Joseph Proudhon. In the ensuing decades he and Engels waged a long-drawn-out struggle against Proudhonism and generally against the anarchist persuas i on 8. "The work of Marx o n the Civil War o f 1 8 7 1 has an extraordinary his torical significance: for by this bold step Marx annexed the memory o f the Commune. It is only since then that Marxism has possessed a revolutionary tradition in the eyes of mankind. By 1 8 7 0 Marx had already aClll uired a rep utation as an outstanding theoretician o f the labour motivement, but the gen eral public knew nothing o f the politi-
cal and revolutionary activity o f the Marxists . . . . I t is only since 1 8 7 1 that Marxism has been clearly associated wit h the labour revolution . . . . In this manner Marx provided an important tradition for the future movements o f t h e w o r k i n g class. and he placed h i s own doctrines in t h e centre o f t h ese movements" (Arthur Rosenberg, De mocracy and Socialism [Boston : Bea con Press. 1 9 6 5 1 . pp. 2 04-2 0 5 ) .
xxxiv
Introduction
i n socialism, one of whose leading proponents in the later n in e teenth century was
the Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin .
Paradoxically, the Paris C o m m u n e of 1 8 7 1 was, in its decentraliz in g measures, a victory of the Proudhonian infl uence, but this i n no way inhibited Marx and Engels from hailing the C o m m u ne a s
a
harbinger of the realization of the Marxist theory of history a n d h e n ce claiming it for Marxism . 9 An o th er arena of t h e i r competitive struggle for the dominance of the Marxist theory was German working-class politics, i n which a prominent part was played by the gifted political l eader Ferdinand Lassall e. Their figh t against Lassal lean doctrinal i n fl uences continued unabated after Lassalle's death i n 1 8 64 a n d finally was immortalized in a set of notes by Marx that was published p osthumously under the title
Program
Critique of the Gotha
and has since taken its place as o n e o f Marxism's m a j o r
programmatic statements . The London
International in
1 864
\Vorking
by
Men's
representatives
Association, of
the
founded
English,
in
French.
German, and Italian workers as an international coordinating b o dy for
the working-class movements
offered
an
important
forum
for
of these a n d other countries, the
propagation
of
Marxi s m .
Although h e was p r e s e n t at t h e founding m eeting o f the associa tion, now better known as the First International, Marx was n o t one o f its original organizers . Subsequently, however, h e played a leading part in its affairs. In drafting the rules of the association, h e prefaced them with an " I n a ugural Address" written i n h i s charac teristically forceful and incisive manner. Although h e had to h o l d t h e revol utionary rhetoric i n check b e c a u s e o f constraints arising from the diverse membership of this l oose federation of worker groups from
different countries,
he
managed
to
formulate
the
Address in the spiri t o f Marxist doctrine and make of i t a k i nd of successor- document to the
Communist Manifesto .
Later, when the
fall of the Paris C o mmune made E uropean revolutionary prospects and h ence those of the In ternational appear dim for the time being, Marx was concerned lest Bakunin a n d the anarchists acquire a deci sive influence in the associati o n . H e therefore proposed,
at its
Hague Congress in 1 8 7 2 , that the headquarters b e moved t o New York. The ensuing transfer t o America signaled the International's demise. Marxism w a s n o t a party doctrine in its inception, n o r did Marx a n d Engels originally envisage it as the formal ideology o f a politi cal pa rty . The C o m m unist League, on w h ose behalf they wrote the
Communist l\·1anifesto, of 9.
a
was not a political party but only a group
few hundred German j ourneymen workers living in P a ris, Brus-
See R o s e n b e r g , Democracy and Socialism, pp. 2 02-2 0 5 , for f u r t h e r parti-
culars
and
a discussion
of
this
issue.
Introduction sels, an d London . In the
Manifesto,
explicitly discla i m e d the n o tion Marxists )
xxxv
moreover, Marx a n d Engels
that the communists
( i .e . ,
the
should form themselves into a separate party, o r that
they should " set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the p roletarian movemen t . " The commu nists, they went o n , were simply the most consisten t l y radical representa tives of the proletarian movem e n t and th ose with clear theoretical understanding of its conditions and aims . I n later years, h owever, Marx and Engels shifted their gro u n d in response to the rise of working-class political parties i n a number o f European countries, Germany in particular.
A
General German \Vorkers' Society arose
in 1 8 6 3 under Lassa l l e . Three years l ater a German Social Demo cratic Vlorkers' Party was founded under the leadership o f \Vil helm Liebknecht, a longtime follower of Marx. The merger o f the two groups in 1 8 7 5 established the German Social Democrats as the leading working-class political party o f \Vestern E u ro p e , with Marxist socialism as its ideology; and similar parties emerged in Italy, Austria, France, and elsewhere. Although the name "Social D e m ocrat" did not please them , ! Marx a n d Engels w elcomed the rise o f socialist working-class parties professing Marxism as their platform . The irony of this development was that Marxism 's very s uccess in the struggle for supremacy in working-class politics o f the later nineteenth century endangered what Lenin later called its "revolu tionary soul . " Although officially dedicated to Marxist principles of the revolutionary transformation o f society, the Social Dem ocratic parties were not really very radica l . In some instances, such as in Germany, they were associated with organized trade 1l11 i on move ments whose aims were basically reformist. Finally, increasing elec toral success gave them both a place and a stake in the existing order, a n d encouraged the tendency o f the party leaderships to look to the ballot box and the gradual con quest of political power by peaceful parliamentary means as the hig hroad to a socialist reshap ing o f society. The concern this aroused in Marx and Engels is clearly shown in their " C ircular Letter" o f September 1 7- 1 8 , 1 8 79; to Bebel, Liebknecht, and other German Social Dem ocratic leaders. 1. W h e n i n f o r m e d in 1 8 6 4 t h a t the newspaper of the General German Workers' Society would be called The Social Democ rat, Engels wrote to Marx : "What a disgusting title-The Social Democrat ! Why d o n ' t those fel lows frankly call the thin g : The Prole tarian ? " Marx answere d : "Social Dem ocrat is a bad title. Yet o n e shoul dn't i m m e d iately u s e the b e s t title for something which may turn out to be a fail ure" (Rosenberg, Dem ocracy and
Socialism, p. 1 6 2 ) . A Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party came into existence i n 1 8 9 8 . In 1 9 1 7 , out of dis gust with the behavior of the Social Democratic leaders o f various countries who had s u pported their governments i n World W a r I i n contravention of Marxist internationalism, Lenin per suaded his Bolsh e v i k branch of the Russian Social Democratic Party to change its name to "Communist Party."
Introduction
XXXVI
It castigated the spirit o f reformism spread i n g in the
German
party and insisted upon fidelity to the revolutionary class struggle as the o n l y possible means of freeing the working cl asses . It is a fact, h o wever, that without renouncing h i s basic revolu tionism and the related belief that the socialist revolution wo u l d in most countries have to take place by force, Marx envisaged the pos sibility o f a n o n v i o l e n t p a t h to socialism in certain coun tries, l i k e America
and B r i t a i n , wh ose p o l i t i c a l institutions
made
radical
change by democratic m eans conceivable. A very cl e a r statement to this effect was made in a speech in Amsterdam in
State and Revolution ( 1 9 1 7 )
1 87 2 . 2 I n The
Lenin contended that conditions in
those countries h a d so changed i n the interim that a Marxist coul d no longer recognize such p o tential exceptional ism. Meanwhile, the leading Social D emocratic Marxist theorist, Karl Kautsky, h el d to and expanded upon Marx's po sition, and the split between Com m u nist ( i . e . , Marxist-Leninis t ) a n d Social Democratic Marxism in t h e twentieth century turned largely on this i s s u e . Much l a t e r , in 1 9 56, Soviet Marxism under Nikita Khrushchev adopted a m o d i fied form of Marx's old position by positing that in certain ( especia l l y u n d er develope d )
countries with powerful Communist p a rties, socialist
revolution could take place by a "peaceful parliamentary path . " 3 Among revolutionaries a n d theorists o f revol ution, t h e question o f the role of violence in social revolution remains controversial to this
day.
Marx died in
during
which
1 8 8 3 and Engels survived him by twelve years
the
German
Social
D emocrats
continued
their
a dvance a t the p oll s . In a n essay published i n 1 89 5 tha t proved to be
his
own
valedictory
to
the
Social
D e mocratic movement,4
Engels seemed to soften the Circular Letter's i n sistence on revolu tionary class struggle as the only acceptable p olitical strategy for a Marxist party. At any rate, he al lowed that classic street-fighting on the barricades h a d largely been rendered obsolete by technological improvements favoring the military, and hailed the German S o cial D e mocrats' two mil lion voters as "the decisive ' s hock force' of the i n ternational proletarian army . " But on close reading, particularly after restoration o f those passages excised from the essay by the e d i tors when it was originally published in
1 89 5 , Engels' concluding
discourse on tactics turns out to b e by n o means an endorsement o f S o c i a l D e m o c r a t i c reform is m . His comm itment to the Marxian 2. See the text o f this speech. b e l o w . 3 . For L e n i n 's a r g u m e n t see The State and R e v o lution i n The Lenin A nt h o l ogy, e d . R o b e r t C . Tucker (New York : W. W. Norton. 1 9 7 5 ) , p. 3 3 7 . For K a u tsky's position and the Lenin-Kaut sky c o n fl ict, see K ar l Kautsky, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (Ann
A r bo r : U n i versity o f Mich igan Press, 1 9 6 4 ) , a n d Tucker, The Marxian R e v o l utionary I d e a , chapter 3 . S o v i e t Marx i s m ' s espousal o f the cO,ncept o f a peacefu l path is analyzed in chapter 6 of the l a t t e r w o r k . 4 . Engels, "The T a c t i c s o f S o c i a l De mocracy," below.
Intro ductio n
xxxvii
revoluti onalJ idea held firm to the end . For the older Engels, no less than for the younger Marx, the point was to change the world radically. IV
The meetings between Marx and Engels in Paris in August, 1 844, and in Brussels in April, 1 84 5 , inaugurated a partnership that con tinued unbroken to Marx's death nearly forty years after. Indeed, it continued beyond that time, for Engels devoted h is final years to carrying forward the work on which he and his friend had been engaged together for so long. Intellectual history offers Jew if any comparable examples of lifelong collaboration between innovative minds . How shall we assess the relative weight of their contribu tions? I n a footnote to an essay of 1 886, Engels answered this question as follows : I cannot deny that both before a�d � uring my forty year.s' coll�b oration with Marx I had a certam mdepen dent share m laymg the foundat ions of the theory, a � d mor� partic�l arly . in .its elabora tion . But the greater part of � ts leadm � basIc pnnclpl es, espe cially in the realm of econom ICS a.nd hIstory, b � long to Marx . \Vhat I contribu ted-at any rate WIth the exceptIo n of m y work in a few special fields-Marx could very well have d ? ne WIthout me. \Vhat Marx accomp lished I would n � t have achle �ed. M� rx stood higher, saw further, and took a WIder and qUlcker VIew than all the rest of us . Marx was a genius; we others were at �e � t talented . \Vithou t him the theory would not be by far what I t IS today. It therefor e rightly bears his name.5 This generous tribute rightly recognized that Marx's mind was the forge of the system . True, Engels during his first sojourn in Man chester had independently and somewhat earlier than Marx come to the view that economics is the decisively important force in history, and his "Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy" had helped to inspire Marx's first attempt at such a critique. Yet Marxism as a transformed Hegelianism, a theory of history in the grand style; was essentially, as we have seen, Marx's creation. He was the seer a nd system-builder in relation to whom the merely talented Engels was bound to play a subordinate part. B ut after acknowledging this, i t m ust also be said that Engels was misleadingly modest concerning his own contributions. The Marx-Engels correspondence reflects a two-way process of collabora tion in which Engels gave theoretical assistance to Marx-for Philosoph y. p . 386 . 5. Engt:ls, Ludwig Feuerbac h and the End of Cla s sic al German
xxxvm
Introduction
example, on various problems encountered in the writing of Capi tal a s well as vice versa. Engels' independent contributions were substantial too, both in the works that he and Marx wrote j ointly and in some that he produced on his own . One of the special fields of his expertise was military affairs and strategy. Another was natu ral science, and his writings on this subject-including the papers posthumously published Ullder the title Dialectics of Nat ure gave the impetus to the rise of "dialectical materialism" as a Marxist teaching about . nature. \Vhether one feels that Marxism was enriched or vulgarized by the latter development, its importance is undeniable. Still another area of Engels' work was primitive society. He carried out Marx's unfulfilled plan of writing a treatise based upon the American anthropologist Lewis Henry l\Iorgan's Ancient Society. The resulting work on The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State6 provided Marxism with an anthropology, including a theory and history of the family and a viewpoint on the role of women in society. As the writings gathered in Part V of this volume show, more over, one of Engel s' greatest services consisted in the systematizing and popularizing of Marxism . Marx was the great system-builder, yet he never managed in the writings published during his lifetime to set forth the fundamentals of the system in easily understand able terms in an essay or short book; Capital was not bedtime read ing for the masses. Engels made good this deficiency. He lacked the supremely trenchant style of Marx, who wrote as though his pen were dipped in mol ten anger. But Engels' beautifully clear and free-flowing prose was ideally suited to the popularizing work to which he applied himself. In a number of letters on historical materialism7 he attempted to clarify the economic interpretation of history and deal with certain questions that had arisen concerning it. His Anti-Diihring gave a running exposition of Marxism in the course of a p olemic again st one of its critics, and the portion of it published in 1 8 8 0 under the title Socialism: Utopian and Scientific probably did more than any other single book to disseminate knowledge of Marxism. Engels even undertook to bri ng Capital to the wide public by writing nine different reviews of it, seven of which achieved publication at the time . Paraphrasing Engels, one could say that without him Marxism would not be by far what it became. His gifts and Marx's were in large measure complementary. Classical Marxism is a n amalgam in which Engels' work constitutes an essential and inalienable part. -
-
6 . Selections below.
from
this
work
appear
7. See below.
Note on Texts and Terminol og y The strange publishing history of Marx's writings was foresh ad_ owed by th eir a u th o r when, l a te in his life, someone asked about his complete works. "They would first have to be written , " he is said t o have replied . Marx mus t have had in mind that much of what he had p roduced wa s still in unfinished manuscript and that his grand p roject of a multi-volume work, of which Capital would be only one part, was unlikely ever to be realized . 1 As it turned out, he did not live even to prepare Volumes Two and Three of Capital for publi cation . In
1 894, after putti n g out Volume Three of Capital, En gels
began making arrangements for a complete edition of Marx's works and his own . But this p ro j ec t foundered upon h i s death in the fol lowing year, after which his papers and Marx's came into the posses sion ·of th e German Social Democratic Party ( SPD ) . For a long time, only limited efforts at publication were made. In 1 90 2 Franz Mehri n g put out a collection of the earlier writings ( 1 8 4 1 - 5 0 ) , Aus
dem literarischen Nachlass von ( Out
of
the
Literary
K.
Legacy
Marx,
of
F.
M a rx ,
Engels und Engels
and
F. Lassalle
Lassalle ) .
B etween 1 90 5 and 1 9 1 0 Marx's multi-volume Theories of Surplus
Value came out under the editorship of Karl Kautsky. A heavily ( and
tendentio usly )
edited
four
volumes
of
correspondence
between Marx and Engels appeared in 1 9 1 3 . But systematic full-scale publication o f their writings began only after the creation in 1 9 2 1 , under Lenin ' s personal sponsorship, of the M a rx-Engels Institute in Moscow. Th e Institute had the fi nan cial backing of the Soviet Communist Party and, in its first decade, the able, dedicated direction of David B. Riazanov. Between
1923
and 1 9 2 7 the Institute obtained photocopies of the manuscripts and correspondence of Marx and Engels in the S P D's archives, bought up manuscripts and letters owned by various individuals, and gathered early editions of ind,ividual works .2 An institution
of
comparable importance, the International Institute of Social His1 . For one of Marx's versions of the grand project, see the Grundrisse, be 'low ' p. 2 4 4. T h e successive versions are discussed by Joseph J. O'Mal ley in "Marx's 'Economics' and Hegel's Philosophy 0/ Right: An Essay on Marx's Hegelianism," Political Stud ies, vol. XXIV, no. 1 ( M arch 1 97 6 ) , pp. 48 ff.
2. For t his a n d other particulars about the Institute I have drawn upon E. A. Stepanova, "0 sobirianii i nauchnoi publikatsii v SSSR Iiteraturnogo nasledstva osnovopolozhnikov m ark sizma," in Iz istorii marksizma (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1 9 6 1 ) , pp. 6-5 9 .
x xxix
xl
Note on Texts and Terminology
.
tory, was founded in Amsterdam in 1 9 3 5 a n d became the repository of the SPD's archives, which were endangered after the Nazis took power in Germany i n 1 9 3 3 . A first attempt a t a full collection was the Marx-Engels I n stitute's three
volumes,
En gels, lected
Marx
and
Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe ( H istorical- Critical 'Norks, generally known as MEGA ) . A fuller edition
published between
1927
and
1 9 3 2,
Col was
published in Russian between 1 9 2 8 a n d 1 9 4 6, in thirty-four vol umes : Matx a n d Engels,
Sochineniia
( Works ) . In the m i d- 1 9 5 0 ' s
t h e Institute of Marxism -Leninism ( as t h e Marx-Engels Institute had been rename d ) commenced publication of a new, more com plete edition in both German and Russian . The German edition is Marx
and
Engels,
Werke (\Vorks),
41
volumes
( Berlin;
Dietz
Verlag, 1 9 57-6 8 ) . But this edition is still far from complete. The first se\'en volumes of the English translation of it, covering the pe riod up to a n d including 1 84 8 , are now ( 1 9 7 7 ) available in Marx and Engels, York :
Collected Works
( M oscow : Progress Publishers; New
I n ternational Publishers; London : Lawrence & \Vishart ) .
Multi-volume collections in English are presently coming o u t in the Marx Library series ( New York; Vintage Books ) and the Karl Marx Library series ( New York : McGraw-Hill ) . Most o f the principal writings of Marx a n d Engels are also available i n i n d ividual editions in English . Still, the literary legacy is not yet entirely a n open b o ok . Thus t h e first full collection of t h e Marx-En gels co rrespondence for the New York
Daily Tribune
is only n o w coming out i n English :
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
New York "Daily Tribune,"
The Collected Writings in the
ed. T. Fer guson and S. J. O ' Neil ( New
York : Urizen, 1 9 7 7 ) . Meanwhile, a monumental effort at a truly complete edition in one h un d r ed Yolumes---{; o mpletion p ro j ected for the year 2 000has been announced as a collaborative project of the M o scow a n d E a s t Berlin institutes o f Marxism-Leninis m . This n e w MEGA-its title is Marx
and
Engels,
Gesamtausgabe-is
to include all
of
Marx' s still unpublished notebooks, the preparatory materials for
Capital,
even his miscellaneous j o ttings . 3
Riazanoy i s s a i d t o have remarked that Marx h a d to b e translated twice :
first from h is hard - to-q ecipher h an dwriting into legible German, and then from German into Russi a n . Translators o f Marx
from German into other languages have had to resolve some special problems, arising in p a rt from Marx's use of Hegelian philosophical terminology. H e made particularly heavy use of this terminology in h i s early writings, b u t i t d i d n o t disappear from h i s later ones a n d those of Engels. 3. I am indebted to Professor J o s e p h J. O'Malley for this information.
N ate an Texts and T erminalagy
xli
Pervasive in the "o riginal Marxis m " of Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1 8 44, a n d recurrent in such later writ ings as the Grundrisse and even Capital, is the term Entfremdung, for which
some
"estrangem e n t . "
translators
h ave
Correspond i ngly,
used
"alienation"
Marx's
and
others
Selbstentfremdung
be
comes either "self-alie n a ti o n " o r "self-estrangem ent . " In the trans l a tion of the 1 844 man uscripts used here, Martin Milligan has used " estrangement" and " self-estrangemen t . " Thus th e title of the fa mous section
Die entfremdete Arbeit
is rendered a s "Es tranged
Labo u r . " \V h a t becomes estranged from m a n , notably t h e product o f his l a b o r a n d t h e surrounding material world as t h e aggregate of s u c h products, m u s t first be created . The process of creation is called by Marx
which is sometimes translated as
Entaiisserung,
"aliena tio n " ( as by Milligan i n the 1 844 manuscripts below ) , and s ometimes, more literally, as "objectific a tion . " The latter trans lation may cause c o n fusion because Marx also employs the term
Vergegenstiindlichung,
which quite literally means ( an d is trans
lated ) " o b j ectification . " Another Hegelianism that Marx took over a n d that i s central to an understanding of h is thought-and that causes problems for the transla t o r-is
Aufhebung
( from the verb
aufheben ) ,
variously ren
dered in different translations ( or even the same one ) as "a boli tio n , " " annulment," " s upercession,"
and "transcendence . " Marx
himself wrote "s uspension" in a passage penned in English i n the
Grundrisse.4 The source of the problem is the richness and specificity of the concep t to which the word is attached. F o r Hegel,
Aufhebung
is the
culmina ting movement in a dialectical process that p roceeds from a n in itial stage o f affirmation o r creation through a subsequent n e g . ation to a final synthesis via "negation of the negation , " the l atter being the nub o f the dialectic. Hence Hegel emphasizes that the term has the twofold connotation of elimination and p reservation : what undergoes
Aufhebung
is negated without being nullified . It is
negateQ in its negative aspect but, thus transformed, continues to exist .5 The same,
mutatis mutandis,
h ol d s for Marx. Thus in the
1 844 manuscripts he speaks of the future communist revolution as the
Aufhebung
of private property and of man's self-estrangement.
Through its revolutionary appropriation b y the proletarians, which Marx ( at the close of
Capital,
Volume One, calls the "negation of
t h e negation " ) private p roperty is a n n u l e d or abolished 4.
See below, pp. 2 9 1- 2 9 2 , and Martin Nicolaus' discussion of the point in his Foreword to the full translation ( Karl Marx, Grundris s e : Foundations of t h e Critique o f Political E c o n o m y [New York : Vintage Books, 1 9 7 3 1 . p. 3 2 ) .
qua
private
5 . The meaning o f A ufhebung i n the context of Hege l's philosophy of spirit is explicated in Robert C. Tucker, Philosophy
and
Myth
in
Karl Marx
(New York : 1 9 7 2 ) , pp. 5 1 -5 2 , 5 9-60.
xlii
Note o n Texts and Terminology
p roperty, but preserved in a-for M a rx-higher form : the socialized means of producti o n . Because the term has this twofold meaning, some translators vary the translation according to con text, as the negative o r positive connotation seems upperm o s t . Milligan, for example, in his
translation of the
1 844 manuscripts,
i n one sentence as "transcendence"
translates
( of man's
self
estrangement ) and in another as "annulment" ( of the s ta t e )
( see
Aufhebung
p. 8 4 , below ) . One other term met very often in Marx yet often misunder stood-although not because of difficulty of translation-is "mode of producti o n "
sweise ) .
( Weise der Produktion,
alternatively
Produktion
One might easily suppose that i t refers to instruments of
production ( Marx calls these
Produktionsmitt e ls )
or state of tech
nology, but such i s not the cas e. Marx, to begin with, treats all forms of human activity under the aspect of producti o n . So, i n the 1 844 manuscripts ( see p.
8 S , below ) he says that the family, s tate,
law, morality, science, a n d art are so many
Weisen der Produktion.
And when he refers to "mode of production " i n an economic con t ext, he means a given way of carrying o n production
as a social
activity-conditioned i n every case, it is true, by a prevailing set of the means of p ro d uction or state o f technology. T h e mode of pro duction is thus a form of productive activity, historically a form of l abor, e . g . , serf labor under feudalism or wage labor under capital ism. Marx's term for the new mode of produ ction which he envis ages arising on the yon der side of history, after the worldwide p role tarian revolution, is "associated" p roductio n . "Labor" will h ave been abolished ( see
The German Ideology,
below,
p. 1 9 3 ) , not in
the sense that individuals will sink into indolent inactivity, but th a t their productive activities will take o n t h e character o f free creative ' self-expressio n not performed for wages o r acquisitive pu rposes . Pro ductive activity, h aving undergone
Aufhebung
as labor, will con
tinue i n a new m o d e . A s with any i m p o rtant thinker w h ose writings g e t translated, Marx pres e nts n o t only particular translating problems but a more general issue : to what extent should felicity of expression
be s o ught
at the expense of closeness to the original text? There is no ideal solution; some c o m p romise i s the natural outc o m e . Yet when prob lems of exegesis a re both difficult and stubbornly controversial, as h ere, there is something to be said for the p osition taken by Martin Nicolaus when he says of his translation o f Marx's
Grundrisse
that
i t " a i m s a t a tight fit to t h e original, including the roughness o f g r a m m a r etc . To a ttempt to 'polis h ' this text w o u l d have b e e n to tamper with an essential part of its signific a n c e . " That applies with special force to a work that Marx left in raw manuscript . But th e n m u c h of w h a t h e w r o t e fi n a l l y c a m e to l i g h t in tha t f o r m .
PART I
The Early Marx
Marx on the History of His Opinions This is the preface to Marx's book A Contribution to the Critique of Po litical Economy, first published in 1 8 5 9 - The passage �etting forth Jpe _ma
�ry--one
terialist conception 'o
tHeoiY-th�ve
of the few general statements
01tIie'
in his middle and later years-is the locus classicus
of historical materialism. B u t the preface is also i m portant as a n account by Marx himself of the formative period of M a r x i s m . As such i t forms a n ap propriate introd uction to the writings of 1 8 3 7-1 846 gathered here i n Part
I. The "criticism o f post Hegelian ph i losoph y -
"
which h e mentions i n the
third-to-last paragraph i s a reference to his wor k The German Ideology, written j o i ntly with Engels.
*
*
*
I am
omitting
a
general
introduction
which
I
had
j o tted down because on closer reflection any anticipation of results still to be proved appears to m e t o be d i s t u rbing, and the reader
who o n the whol e desires to follow me must b e resolved to ascend from the particular t o the genera l .
A
few indications concerning the
course o f my own politico-economic studies may, on the other hand, appear in place h er e . I w a s taking u p law, which discipline, however, I only p u r s u e d a s a subordinate subject a l on g w i t h philosophy and history. In the year
1 84 2-44,
as editor of the
Rheinische Zeitung,1
I experienced
for the first time the embarrassment oJ having t o take part in dis cussions on so-called material interests. The proceedings of the R h enish Landtag on thefts o f wood and parcelling of landed propc erty, the official polemic which Herr von Schaper, then
dent
of the Rhine Province, opened against the
ObeTpTiisi� Rheinische Zeitung�
on the conditions of the Moselle peasantry, and finally debates ori f ree trade and p rotective tariffs provided the first occasions
'for
occupying myself with economic q u estion s . On the other hand, at that time when the good will " to go furt her" greatly outweighed knowledge of the subject, a philosophically weakly tinged ech o o f F r e n c h socialism and communism m a d e itself au d i bl e in t h e
ische Zeitung.
I
declared
m y self
1 8 4 2-43 ;
but
tober 1 5 , 1 8 4 2 , to M a r c h 1 8 , 1 8 4 3 , its editor was Marx .
1 . Rheinische Zeitung ( R h enish Gazette) : A daily radical newspaper pubIished in Cologne in
Rhein
against this amateurism,
from Dc-
3
4
The Early Marx
frankly confessed at the same time in a controversy with the All
gemeine Augsburger Zeitung2 that my previous studies did n o t
p e r m i t me even to venture a n y j udgemen t on t h e c o n t e n t o f the French tendencies. I nstead, I eagerly seized on the illusion of the managers of the Rheinische Zeitung, who thought that by a weaker attitude on the part of the paper they could secure a remission of the death sentence passed upon it, to withdraw from the public stage into th e study. The first work which I u n d ertook for a solution o f the doubts which assailed m e was a critical review of the Hegelian philosophy of right, a work the introd uction to which appeared in 1844 in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher,3 p ublished i n Paris . My i nvesti gation led to the result that legal relations as well as forms of state are to be grasped neither from" 'themsel�es n o r from the so-called general development of the h u m a n mind, but rather have their roOFS-ln1l.1Ci1iaTe ria! condifloiiS-6r1iIe, thesiiill "'fofaror WFlich Hegel, following the example of the Englishmen and Frenchmen of the eighteenth century, combines under the n a m e of "civil society, " that, however, the an atomy of civil society is to be sought in politica l economy . The investigation of the latter, which I bega n in Paris, I continued in Brussels, whither I had em igrated in conse quence of an expulsion order of M . Gu izot. The general res ult at . which I arrived and which, once won, served a s a guiding thread for my studies, c a n be briefly formulated a s follows : Ir� the -social-pro' d uction of their life, men enter into definite re.ktions-.tl'la.t..a�jQdiso. ..
-��:a.u.d. J!ig�p.�ii.L .ili;n orIheT;-will , ..
;eI.1ti.QH�-.pI.Qd!.u;.tio.u
which _�Q.rr..�iR ond to a definite stage of development of their mate:: <.iliT""RToducti vTfeirces.-Tlie-·suriYTot3r6nhese-rerarlons of produc " tion cori:sfltnte"S-tn�-eeonomic structure of society, the real founda ! tion, on which rises a legal and pol itical s uperstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social con sciousness. The mode of. p rQg.!!£ tlQ!!..�aterial l ife con ditions the social, polfficar -aricr \. in tellec:.t ual life .l?!.Q.Q.�_L in �l).era.FlriS nof--flj:econsclO usness of men that determines their being, b u t , on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material prod uctive forces of society come i n con fl ict with the existing relations of prod uction, or-what is but a legal expression for the same thing-with the property rela tions within which they have been at work hitherto . From forms of development of the prod uctive forces these relations turn into their
I\
2. Marx has in mind his article, "Der Kommunismus u n d d i e A ugsburger All gemeine Zeitung" ( Communism a n d t h e Aug sbur g General Journal) , M arx Engels Gesamtausgabe, Abt. I , B. I , Halbband I, Frankfurt am Main,
1 9 2 7 , S. 2 60-6 5 . 3 . Deutsch-Franzosische
J ahrbucher
Organ o f revol u t ionary a n d c o m m u n i s t propa ganda, published b y M a r x i n Paris i n
(German-Freno/!
1 844.
A nnals ) :
Marx o n the History of His Opinions
5
fetters . Then begins an epoch of social revolution . \Vith the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstruc ture is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such trans formations a distinction should always be made between the mate rial transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic-in short, ideolog ical forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transfor mation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this conscious ness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production . No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation . In broad outlines Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modem bourgeois modes of production can be desig nated a s progressive epochs in the econom ic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production ar,e the last antagonistic form of the social process of production-antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one arising from the social condi tions of life of the individuals; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the mate rial conditions for the solution of that antagonism . This social for mation brings, therefore, the prehistory of human society to a close. Frederick Engels, with whom, since the appearance of his bril liant sketch on the criticism of the economic categories ( in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher ) , I maintained a constant ex change of ideas by correspondence, had by another road ( com pare his The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1 844 ) arrived at the same result as I, and when in the spring of 1 84 5 he also settled in Brussels, we resolved to work out in common the opposition of our view to the ideological view of German philoso phy, in fact, to settle accounts with our erstwhile philosophical conscience. The resolve was carried out in the form of a criticism of post-Hegelian philosophy. The manuscript, two large octavo vol umes, had long reached its place of publication in \Vestphalia when we received the news that altered circumstances did not allow of its being printed . We abandoned the manuscript to the gnawing
6
The Early Marx
criticism of the mice all the more willingly as we had achieved our main purpose-self-clarification. Of the scattered works in which we put our views before the public at that time, now from one aspect, now from another, I will mention only the Manifesto of the Communist Party, jointly written by Engels and myself, and Dis cours sur le libre echange published by me. The decisive p oints of our view were first scientifically, although only polemically, indi cated in my work p ublished in 1847 and directed against Proudhon : Misere de la Philosoph ie, etc. A dissertation written in German on Wage Labour, in which I put together my lectures on this subject delivered in the Brussels German Workers' Society, was inter rupted, while being printed, by the February Revolution and my consequent forcible removal from Belgium . The editing of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in 1 848 and 1 849, and the subsequent events, interrupted my economic studies which could only be resumed in the year 1 8 5 0 in London. The enormous material for the history of political economy which is accumulated in the British Museum, the favourable vantage point afforded by London for the observation of bourgeois society, and finally the new stage of development upon which the latter appeared to have entered with the discovery of gold in California and Australia, determined me to begin afresh from the very beginning and to work through the new material critically. These studies led partly of themselves into apparently quite remote subjects on which I had to dwell for a shorter or longer period . Especially, however, w a s the time at my disposal curtailed by the imperative necessity of earning my living. My contributions, during eight years now, to the first English-American newspaper, the New York Tribune, compelled an extraordinary scattering of my studies, since I occupy myself with newspaper correspondence p roper only in exceptional cases. How ever, articles on striking economic events in England and on the Continent constituted so considerable a part of my contributions that I was compelled to make myself familiar with practical details which lie outside the sphere of the actual science of political econ omy. This sketch of the course of my studies in the sphere of political economy is intended only to show that my views, h owever they may be judged and however little they coincide with the inter ested prejudices of the ruling classes, are the results of conscien tious investigation lasting many years. But at the entrance to sci ' ence, as at the entrance to hell, the demand must be poste d : Qui s i convien lasciare ogni sospetto; Ogni vilta convien che qui sia morta .4 4.
Here all mistrust must be abandoned And here must perisb every craven thought. ( D ante. The Divine Comedy)
Discovering Hegel KARL MARX On November 1 0 , 1 8 3 7 , soon after becom ing a student a t the University of Berlin, M a r x wrote a long letter to his f a t h er. I t shows that a t nineteen he h a d formed two relationships o f great importanc e :
a personal one with
Jenny von Westphalen o f Trier and a n intellectual one with the late philos opher Hegel. The love o f Jenny led to marriage, the spell o f Hegel to Marxism.
Dear Father, There are mom ents in one's life w hich are like frontier p osts marking the completion of a p eriod but at the same time clearly indicating a new d irection . *
*
*
After my arrival in Berlin, I broke off all h i therto existing c o nnec tions, made visits rarely and unwillingly, and tried to immerse myself i n science a n d art. ' In accor d ance with m y state of m i n d a t the time, lyrical poetry was bou n d to be my first subj ect, at l ea s t the most pleasant and immediate one. But o w i n g to m y attitude a n d w h o l e previous devel opment it was purely idealistic. My h eaven, m y art, became a world beyon d, as remote as m y love. Everything real became hazy an d what is hazy h a s no definite outlines . All the poems of th e first three volumes I sent to Jenny are marked by attacks on our times, diffuse and inchoate expressions of feeling, nothing natural, every thing built o u t of moonshine, complete opposition between what is
and what ought to be, rhetorical reflections ins tead of p o e tic thoughts, b u t perhaps also a certain warmth of feeling a n d striving . for poetic fi re .
* * *
Poetry, however, could be a n d h a d to be only an accompani ment;
I had to study law and above all felt th e urge to wrestle with
p h i losophy.
*
*
*
From the idealism which, by the way,
I
h a d compared a n d n o u r
ished with the ideal ism of Kant a n d Fichte, I arrived at the p oi n t of seeking the idea in reality itsel f . If previously the gods had dwelt above the earth, n o w they became its centre. I had read fragments o f Hegel's philosophy, the grotesque craggy melody of w h ich did not appeal to me. Once more I wanted to dive into the sea, but with the definite intention o f establishing that the nature of the mind is j us t as necessary, concrete and firmly based as the nature of the b o dy . M y a i � l was no longer to p ractise tricks of 7
8
The Early Marx
swordsmanship, but to bring genuine pearls into the light of day. I wrote a dialogue of about
24 pages : " Cleanthes, or the Starting
Poin t and Necessary Continuation o f Phi losoph y . " Here art and sci ence, which had become compl etely divorced from each other, were to s o m e extent united, and like a vigorous traveller I s e t a bout the task itself, a philosophical-dialectical account of divinity, as i t m �nifests i tself as the idea-in -itself, as religion, as n a t u r e , and a s h istory. My l a s t p roposition was t h e beginning of the Hegelian syste m .
* * *
For s ome days my vexation made me quite incapable of thinking; I ran about madly in the garden by the dirty water o f the Spree, which "washes s o uls and dilutes the tea . " l I even j o ined my l a nd lord in a h unting excursion, rushed off t o Berlin a n d wanted to embrace every street-corner loafer. *
*
*
Owning to being upset over Jenny's illness and my vain, fruitless intellectual labours, a n d as the result of nagging annoyance having had to make an idol of a view th a t have already written to
I
hated,
at
I became i l l , as I
YOll, dear Father. \Vhen I got better I burnt
all the poems a n d outlines of stories, etc . , imagining that
I
could
give them up completely, of which so far a t any rate I h ave n o t given a n y proofs t o t h e contrary. \Vhile I was ill I got to know Hegel from beginning to end, together with most
o f his disciples . Through a n umber o f meetings
with friends i n Stralow I came across a D octors' Club , 2 which includes some university lecturers and my most intimate Berlin friend, D r . R u t enberg. I n controversy h e re, many conflicting views were expressed, and I became ever more firmly bound to the mod ern world philosophy from which I had thought to escape. * *
*
*
*
*
Your ever loving s o n ,
Karl Pl ease, dear fath e r, excuse my illegible handwriting a n d bad style; it i s almost
4 o ' clock, the candle has burnt itself out, and m y eyes
are dim; a real u n rest has taken possession of me, I shall not be able to calm the turbulent spectres until I am with you who are dea r to me. Please give greetings f r o m me t o m y sweet, wonderful J e n n y .
I
have read her letter twelve times already, and always discov er new delights i n it. It is in every respect, including that of style, the most beautiful letter I can imagine being written b y a wom a n . 1 . Heine.
2. The D o c t o r s ' Club was founded b y
representatives o f the r a d i c a l w i n g o f the Hegelian s c h o o l i n B e r l i n in 1 8 3 7 . Among its members were lecturer on theology of Berlin U n i versity Bruno Bauer. gymnasium history teacher
Karl Friedrich Koppen, a n d geography teacher Adolf R u tenberg. The usual meeting place was the small Hippel cafe. The Club, o f which Marx was also an active member, played an important p a r t in the Young Hegelian movement.
To Make the W orId Philosophi cal KARL l\1ARX M a r x ' s doctoral dissertation, "The Difference Between t h e Democritean and Epicurean Philosophies o f Nature," written between 1 8 3 9 a n d 1 8 4 1 , i s chiefly of interest for the following excerpts arguing t h a t a f t e r a g r e a t world philosophy-Aristotle's in antiquity and Hegel's now-the system's disciples feel an imperious urge to make the world "philosophical." What this would mean Marx hinted i n the dissertation's foreword, where he saluted Prome theus' revolt against the gods a s a proclamation o f "human self-conscious ness a s the highest divinity." To transform the world i n the image of Hegelian philosophy would mean to make o f man i n existential reality the divinity that, as Marx saw it, Hegel had a1 ready made him i n thought. " The last two paragraphs of the selection are taken from Marx's prepara· tory material for the dissertation, "Notebooks o n Epicurean Philosophy." *
*
*
Also in relation to Hegel it is mere ignorance on the part of his pupils, when they explain one or the other determination of his system by h is desire for accommodation and the like, h ence, in one word, explain it in terms of morality. They forget that only a short time ago they were enthusiastic about all his idiosyncrasies [Einseitigkeitenj , as can be clearly demonstrated from their writ ings. If they were really so affected by the ready-made science they acquired that they gave themselves up to it in naive uncritical trust, then how unscrupulous is their attempt to reproach the Master for a h idden intention behind h is insigh t ! The Master, to whom the science was not something received, but something in the process of becoming, to whose uttermost periphery his own intellectual heart's. blood was pulsating! On the contrary, they rendered themselves sus pect of not having been serious before. And now they oppose their own former condition, and ascribe it to Hegel, forgetting however that his relation to his system was immediate, substantial, while theirs is only a reflected one . *
*
*
r
It is a psychological law that the theoretical mind, once liberated in itself, turns into practical energy, and, leaving the shadowy . empire of Amenthes as will, turns itself against the reality of the L-world existing without it. ( From a philosophical point of view, how ever, it is important to specify these aspects better, since from the " For a fuller statement o f this interpretation, see Robert C . T u c k e r . Philosophy and Myth in Karl Mar", p p . 7 5-8 0 .
9
10
The Early Marx
specific manner of this turn we can reason back towards the imma nent determination and the universal historic character of a philoso phy. We see here, as it were, its curriculum vitae1 narrowed down to its subjective point.) But the practice of philosophy is itself theo retical. It's the critique that measures the individual existence by the essence, the particular reality by the Idea. But this immediate realisation of philosophy is in its deepest essence afflicted with con tradictions, and this its essence takes form in the appearance and imprints its seal upon it. When philosophy turns itself as will against the world of appear flnce, then the system is lowered to an abstract totality, that is, it has become one aspect of the world which opposes anoth er one. Its relationship to the world is that of reflection. Inspired by the urge to realise itself, it enters into tension against the other. The inner self-contentment and completeness has been broken . What was inner light has become consuming flame turning outwards. The result is that as the world becomes phi losophical, philosophy also becomes worldly, that its realisation is also its loss, that what it struggles agains t on the outside is its own inner deficiency, that in the very struggle it falls precisely into those defects which it fights as defects in the opposite camp, and that it can only overcome these defects by falling into them . That which opposes it and that which it fights is always the same as itself, only with factors inverted. This is the one side, when we consider this matter purely obiec tively as immediate realisation of philosophy. However, it has also a subjective aspect, which is merely another form of it. This is the relations hip of the philosophical system which is realised to its intel lectual carriers, to the individual self-eonsciousnesses in which its progress appears . This relationship results in what confronts the world in the realisation of philosophy itself, namely, in the fact that r these individual self-consciousnesses always carry a double-edged demand, one edge turned against the world, the other against phi losophy itself. Indeed, what in the thing itself appears as a relationL ship inverted in itself, appears in these self-consciousnesses as a double one, a demand and an action contradicting each oth er. Their liberation of the world from un-philosophy is at the same time their own liberation from the philosophy that h eld them i n fetters as a particular system. >I< >I< >I< >I<
>I<
>I<
As in the history of philosophy there are nodal points which raise philosophy in itself to concretion, apprehend abstract principles in a totality, and thus break off the rectilinear process , so also there are moments when philosophy turns its eyes to the external wo rld, and 1. Course of life.
To Make the World Philosophical
11
rno longer apprehends it, but, a s a practical person, weaves, a s it were, intrigues with the world, emerges from the transparent king dom of Amenthes and throws itself on the breast of the worldly L Siren . That is the carnival of philosophy, whether it disguises itself as a dog like the Cynic, in priestly vestments like the Alexandrian, or in fragrant spring array like the Epicurean. It is essential that philosophy should then wear character masks . As Deucalion, accord ing to the legend, cast stones behind him in creating human beings, so philosophy casts its regard behind it (the bones of its mother are luminous eyes) when its heart is set on creating a world; but as Pro metheus, having stolen fire from heaven, begins to build houses and to settle upon the earth, so philosophy, expanded to be the whole world, turns against the world of appearance. The same now with the philosophy of Hegel. · \Vhile philosophy has sealed itself off to form a c onsummate, total world, the determination of this totality is conditioned by the general development of philosophy, just as that development is the . condition of the form in which philosophy turns into a practical relationship towards reality; thus the totality of the world in general is divided within itself, and this division is carried to the extreme, for spiritual existence has been freed, has been enriched to univer sality, the heart-beat has become in itself the differentiation in the concrete form which is the whole organism. The division of the world is total only when its aspects are totalities. The world con· fronting a philosophy total in itself is therefore a world torn apart. This philosophy's activity therefore also appears torn apart and con tradictory; its objective universality is turned back into the s ubjec tive forms of individual consciousness in which it has life. But one must not let oneself be misled by this storm which follows a great philosophy, a world philosophy. Ordinary h arps play under any fingers, Aeolian harps only when struck by the storm. >I<
>I<
>I<
F or
a
Ruthless Criticism
of Everything Existing KARL l\1ARX
The watchword of the young Karl Marx, as of his Young Hegelian asso ciates generally, was Kritik-criticism. In this early article, printed in the Deutsch-Franzosische
/ahrbii.cher
in
1844 in
the form
of a
letter
to
Arnold Ruge, Marx elaborated the idea of criticism into a program of this journal, of which he and Ruge were editors. His future strictures on uto pian socialist plans, in the Communist Mani festo and other later writings, were prefigured in the dismissal here of the communist utopias of writers like Etienne Cabet as a "dogmatic abstraction." The Deutsch-Franzosische
Jahrbiicher ( German-French
Annals) came out in Paris in February, 1844,
in the German language. Only one double issue of the journal was pub lished. The translation was made by Dr. Ronald Rogowski for this edition.
M. to R. Kreuznach September, 1843 I am delighted that you are resolved and turn your thoughts from backward glances at the past toward a new undertaking. I n Paris, then, the old university of philosophy (absit omen!) a n d the new capital of the n ew worl d. \Vhat is necessary will arrange itself. I do ilOt doubt, therefore, tha.t all obstacles-whose importance I do not fail to recognize-will be removed. The undertaking may succeed, however, or not; in any case I will be in Paris at the end of this month, since the air here makes one servile and I see no room at all in Germany for free activity. In Germany, everything is being forcibly repressed, a true anarchy of the spirit has burst out, stupidity itself reigns supreme, and Ziirich obeys commands from Berlin; hence i t"becom es ever clearer that a ne w' gathering point must be sought for the really thinking and independent minds . I am convinced that our plan would meet 12
For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing
13
a real need, a n d real needs must surely also b e able t o find real ful fillment. I therefore have no doubts about the enterprise if only we un dertake it seriously. The inner difficulties seem to be almost greater than the external obstacles . For even if there is no doubt about the "whence;" all the more confusion reigns about the "whither." Apart from the general anarchy which has erupted among the reformers, each is compelled to confess to himself that he has no clear conception of what the future should be. That, however, is just the advantage of the new trend : tha t we do not attempt dogmatically to prefigure the future, but want to find th e new world only through criticism of the old. Up to n o w the philosophers h a d the solution of all riddles lying in their lectern, an d the stupid uninitiated world had only to open its jaw s to let the roast partridges of abso lute science fly into its mouth . Now philosophy has become worldly, and the most incon trovertible evidence of this is that the philosophical consciousness has been drawn, not only externally but also internally, into the stress of battle . But if the designing of the future and the procla mation of ready-made solutions for all time is not our affair, then we realize all the more clearly what we have to accomplish in the r present-I am speaking of a ruthless criticism of everything existing, ruthless in two senses : 1be criticism must not be afraid of its own conclusions, nor of conflict with the p owers that be. L I am therefore not i n favor of setting up any dogmatic flag . On the contrary, w e must try t o help the dogmatics to clarify to them selves the meaning of their own positions . Thus communism, to be specific, is a dogmatic abstraction . I do not have in mind here some imaginary, possible communism, but actually existing communism in the form preached by Cabet, Dezamy,1 Weitling,2 etc. This communism is only a special manifestation of the humanistic princi ple which is still infected by its opposite-private being. Elimina tion of private property is therefore by n o means identical with this communism, and i t is not accidental but quite inevitable that com munism has seen other socialist teachings arise in opposition to. jt, such as th e teachings of Fourier, Proudhon, etc . , because it is itself only a special, one-sided realization of the socialist principle. And the socialist principle itself represents, on the whole, only \" one side, affecting the reality of the true human essence. \Ve have to concern ourselves just as much with the other side, the theoretiLcal existence of man, in other words to make religion, science, etc., the objects of our criticism . Moreover, we want to have an effect on o u r contemporaries, and specifically on our German contemporar ies. The question is, how is this to be approached? Two circum1. Theodore Dezamy, author of Code de la nature (1842). [R. T.] 2. Wilhelm Weitling, a German jour-
tailor whose Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom (1842) advo
neyman
cated communism. [R. T.]
.
14
The Early Marx
stances cannot be denied . First, religion, and second, politics, arouse predominant interest in contemporary Germany. We must take these two subjects, however they are, for a starting-point, and not set up against them some ready-made system such as the Vo),age en Icarie.3 Reason has always existed, only not always in reasonable form . The critic can therefore start out b y taking a ny form of theoretical and p ractical consciousness and develop from the unique forms of existing reality the true reality as its norm and final goal. Now so far as real life is concerned, precisely the political state in all its modern forms contains, even where it is not yet consciously imbued with socialist demands, the demands of reason. Nor does the state stop at tha t . The state everywhere presupposes that reason has been realized. But in just this way it everywhere comes into contradic tion between its ideal mission and its real preconditions. Out of this conflict of the political state with itself, therefore, one can develop social truth . Just as re ligion is the catalogue of the theoretical struggles of mankind, so the po litical state is the cata logue of its practical struggles. The political state thus expresses, within the confines of its form sub specie rei publicae,4 all social struggles, needs, truths. Thus it is not at all beneath the hauteur des principes to make the most specific political question-e.g., the difference between the corporative5 and t h e representative system-the object of criticism . For this question only expresses in a political way the difference between the rule of man and the rule of private property. The critic therefore not only can but must go into these political questions (which the crass kind of socialists consider beneath anyone's dignity) . By showing the superiority of the representative system over the corporative system, the critic affects the practical interests of a large party. By elevating the re p resentative system from its political form to its general form and by brin g in g out the true significance underlying this system, the critic at the same time forces this party to go beyond its own confines, since its victory is at the same time its loss. Nothing prevents us, then, from tying our criticism to the criti cism of politics and to a definite party position in politics, and hence from identifying our criticism with real struggles. Then we shall confront the world not as doctrinaires with a new p rinciple: "Here is the truth, bow down before it!" \Ve develop new princi ples to the world out of its own principles. We do n ot say to the world: "Stqp fighting; your struggle is of no accoun t. We want to 3 . This is t he title of Cabet's utopian noyel published in Pari s in 1840. At that time Cabet's followers we r e called " c omm u n is t s ." [R. T.] 4. From the political point of view.
[R. T.]
5. The system of representation by es tates (classes) as opposed to the sys tem of re prese ntat i o n by individuals. [R. T.]
For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing
15
shout the true slogan o f the struggle a t you." We only show the world what it is fighting for, and consciousness is something that the world must acquire, like it or not. The reform of consciousness consists only in enabling the world to clarify its consciousness, in waking it from its dream about itself, in explaining to it the meaning of its own action s. Our whole task can consist only in p utting religious and p olitical questions into self-conscious h uman form-as is also the case in Feuerbach's criti cism o f religion . Our motto must therefore be: Reform of consciousness not .through dogmas, but through analyzing the mystical consciousness, the consciousness which is unclear to itself, whether it appears in religious or political form . Then it will transpire that the world has long been d reaming of something that it can acquire if only it becomes conscious of it. It will tran spire that it is not a matter of drawing a great dividing line between past and future, but of car rying out the thoughts of the past. And finally, it will transpire that mankind begins no new work, but consciously accomplishes its old work. So, we can express the trend of our journal in one word: the work of our time to clarify to itself ( critical philosophy ) the mean ing of its own struggle and its own desires. This is work for the world and for us . It can only be the work of joint forces . It is a matter of confession, no more. To have its sins forgiven mankind has only to declare them to be what they really are.
Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right KARL MARX In line with his program of effecting "a ruthless criticism of everything existing," Marx during 1843 took up the criticism of politics, He set a bout this by working on a commentary on Hegel's treatise on the state, * To the Hegelian political philosophy (which he called, following Feuerbach, "spec ulative philosophy") he applied the method of "transformational criticism" that Feuerbach had applied to the Hegelian philosophy of religion, * * Although the work was left incomplete and unpublished, it was, as Marx
later said (see p. 4, above), a milestone on his road to historical material ism: it led him to the view that instead of the state being the basis of
"civil society," as Hegel held, civil or bourgeois society is the basis of the state. Despite its incompleteness-the extant part of the commentary starts
with paragraph 261 of Hegel's treatise and deals only with selected further sections up to paragraph 308-this work remains of interest as Marx's most
extensive single piece:. of purely political writing, although his standpoint at the time of writing was no more than proto-Marxist.
The State and Civil Societyl *
*
*
The idea is made the subject and the actual relation of family and civil society to the state is conceived as its internal imaginary activity. Family and civil society are the premises of th e state; they are the genuinely active elements, but in speculative philosophy things are inverted. \\Then the idea is made the subject, however, the real subjects, namely, civil society, family, "circumstances, cap rice, etc., " become unreal objective elements of the idea with a changed significance. * *
*
Rationally interpreted, Hegel's propositions would mean only this : The family and civil society are parts of the state. The mate... The treatise is available in English as Hegel's Philosophy of Right, translated with notes by T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942). The complete text of Marx's commentary is available in Karl Marx,
Critique of Hegel's Philosophy Right, translated and edited by
oj Jo-
16
seph J, O'Malley (Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1970). ...... For more on transformational criticism and Marx's application of it in this commentary, see the Intro duction, pp. xxiii-xxiv, above. l. Subheadings supplied by R.C.T.
Contribution to the Critique
17
rial of the state i s distributed amongst them "by circumstances, cap rice and the individual's own choice of vocation ." The citizens of the state are members of families and members of civil society. "The actual idea, mind, divides itself into the two ideal spheres of its concept, family and civil society, that is, its finite phase" hence, the division of the state into family and civil society is ideal, i.e., necessary as part of the essence of the state. Family and civil society are actual components of the state, actual spiritual existences of the wiH; they are modes of existence of the state . Family and civil society constitute themselves as the state. They are the driving force. According to Hegel, they are, on the contrary, produced by the actual idea. It is not the course of their own life which unites them in the state; on the contrary, it is the idea wllich in the course of its life has separated them off from itself. Indeed, they are the finiteness of this idea. They owe their presence to another mind than their own. They are entities determined by a third party, not self-determined entities. Accordingly, they are also defined as "fi niteness," as the "actual idea's" own finiteness. The purpose of their being is not this being itself; rather, the idea separates these presuppositions off from itself "so as to emerge from their ideality as explicitly infinite actual min d." That is to say, there can be no political state without the natural basis of the family and the artifi cial basis of civil society; they are for it a conditio sine qua no n. But the condition is postulated as the conditioned, the determinant as the determined, the producing factor as the product of its product. The actual idea only degrades itself into the "finiteness" of the family and civil society so as by transcending them to enjoy and bring forth its infinity. "Accordingly" (in order to achieve its pur pose), it "assigns to these spheres the �aterial of this, its finite actuality" (this? which? these spheres are indeed its "finite actual ity," its "material " ) , "individuals as a multitude" ("the individuals, the multitude" are here the material of the state; "the state consists of them"; this composition of the state is here expressed as an act of the idea, as an "allocation" which it undertakes with its own material The fact is that the state issues from the multitude in their existence as members of families and as members of civil society. Speculative philosophy expresses this fact as the idea's deed, not as the idea of the multitude, but as the deed of a subjective idea different from the fact itself ) , "in such a way that with regard to the individual this assignment" (previously the discussion was only about the assignment of individuals to the spheres of the family and civil society) "appears mediated by circumstances, cap rice, etc . " Empirical actuality is thus accepted as it is. I t is also expressed as rational, but it is not rational on account of its own reason, but because the empirical fact in its empirical existence has a different significance from it itself. The fact which is taken as a
18
The Early Marx
point of departure is not conceived as such, but as a mystical result. The actual becomes a phenomenon, but the idea has no other con tent than this phenomenon. Nor has the idea any other pur pose than the logical one of being "explicitly infinite actual mind." The entire mystery of the philosophy of law and of Hegel's philoso phy as a whole is set out in this paragraph . *
*
*
If Hegel had set out from real subjects as the bases of the state he would not have found it necessary to transform th e state in a mystical fashion into a subject. "In its truth, however, " says Hegel, "subjectivity exists only as subject, pers onality only as persoll." This too is a piece of mystification. Subjectivity is a characteristic of the subject, personality a characteristic of the person . Instead of COIl ceiving them as predicates of their subjects . Hegel gives the predi cates an independent existence and subsequently transforms them in a mystical fashion into their subjects . The existence of predicates is the subject, so that the subject is the existence of subjectivity, etc.; Hegel transforms the predicates, the objects, into independent entities, but divorced from th eir actual independence, their subject. Subsequently the actual subject appears as a result, whereas one must start from the actual subject and look at its objectification. The mystical substance, therefore, becomes the actual subject, and the real subject appears as something else, as an element of the mystical substance. Precisely hecause Hegel starts from the predicates of the general description instead of from the real ens (lnr0XEtltn'ov, s ubject), and since, nevertheless, there has to be a bearer of these qualities, the mystical idea becomes this bearer. The dualism consists in the fact that Hegel does not look upon the general as being the actual nature of the actual finite, i.e., of what exists and is determinate, or upon the actual ens as the true subject of the infinite. Sovereignty
So in this case sovereignty, the essential feature of the state, is treated to begin with as an independent entity, is objectified. Then, of course, this objective entity has to become a s ubject again . This subject then appears, however, as a self-incarnation of sovereignty; whereas sovereignty is nothing but the objectifed mind of the sub jects of the state. *
*
*
As if the actual state were not the p eopl e. The state is an abstrac tion. The people alone is what is concrete. And it is remarkable that Hegel, who without hesitation attributes a living quality such as
Contribution to th e Critique
19
sovereignty t o the abstraction, attributes i t only with hesitation and reservations to something concrete. "The usual sense, however, in which men have recently begun to speak of the sovereignty of the people is in opposition to the sovereignty existing in the monarch. In this antithesis the sovereignty of th e people is one of those con fused notions which are rooted in the wild idea of the people." The "confused notions" a n d the "wild idea" are here exclusively Hegel's. To be sure, if sovereignty exists in the monarch, then it is foolish to speak of an antithetical sovereignty in the people; for it is implied in the concept of sovereignty tha t sovereignty can not have a double existence, still less one which is contradictory. However: 1) This i s just the question: Is not tha t sovereignty which is claimed by the mona rch an illusion? Sovereignty of the monarch or sovereignty of the people-that is the question. 2) One can a l s o speak of a sovereignty of the people in opposi tion to the sovereignty existing in the monarch. But then it is not a question of one and the same sovereignty which has arisen on two sides, but two entirely cont radictory concepts of sovereignty, the one a sovereignty such as can come to exist in a monarch, the other such as can come to exist onl y in a people. It is the same with the question: "Is God sovereign, or is man?" One of the two is an untruth, even if an existing untruth . "Taken without its monarch and the articulation of the whole which is necessarily and directly associated with the monarch, the people .is that formless mass which is no longer a state. It no longer possesses any of the atrributes which are to be found only in an internally organised whole-sovereignty, government, courts of law, the administration, estates of the realm, etc. With the appearance in a nation of such factors, which relate to organisation, to the life of the state, a people ceases to be that indeterminate abstraction, which, as a purely general notion, is called the nation. " All this is a tautology. If a people has a monarch and the structure tha t neces� sarily and directly goes with a monarch, i.e., if it is structure d · a s a monarchy, then indeed, taken out of this structure, it is a formless mass and a purely general notion. "If by sovereignty of the people is understood a republican form of government and, more specifical ly, democracy . . . then . . . there can be no further discussion of such a · notion in face of the developed idea . " That is indeed right, if one has only "such a notion" and not a "developed idea" of democracy. Democracy
Democracy is the truth of monarchy; monarchy is not the truth of democracy. Monarchy is necessarily democracy inconsistent with itsel f; the monarchical element is not an inconsistency in democ-
20
The Early Marx
racy. Monarchy cannot be understood in its own te=s; democracy can. In democracy none of the elements attains a significance other than what is proper to it. Each is in actual fact only an element of the whole demos [people] . In monarchy one part determines the character of the whole. The entire constitution has to adapt itself to this fixed point. Democracy is the genus Constitution. Monarchy is one species, and a poor one at that . Democracy is content and form . Monarchy i s supposed to be only a form, but it falsifies the content . In monarchy the whole, the people, is subsumed under one of its particular modes of being, the political constitution . In democracy the constitution itself appears only as one determination, that is, the self-determination of the people. In monarchy we have the people of the constitution; in democracy the constitution of the people. Democracy is the solved riddle of all constitutions . Here, not merely implicitly and in essence but existing in reality, the con stitution is constantly brought back to its actual basis, the actual human being, the actual people, and established as the people's own work. The constitution appears as what it is, a free product of man. I t could be said th at in a certain respect this applies also to consti tutional monarchy; but the specific distinguishing feature of democ racy is that here the constitution as such forms only one element in the life of the people-that it is not the political constitution by itself which forms the state . Hegel starts from the state and makes man the subjectified state; democracy starts from man and makes the state objectifi�d man . Just as i t is not religion which creates man but man who creates religion, so it is not the constitution wh ich creates the people but the people which creates the constitution . In a certain respect th e relation o f democracy t o all other forms of state i s like the relation of Christianity to all other religions . Christianity is the religion XUT' f�OX�v,2 the essence of rel i gion-deified man as a particular religion . Similarly, democracy i s t h e essence o f all state constitutions-social ised man as a particular state constitution. Democracy stands to the other constitutions as the genus stands to its species; except that here the genus itself appears as an existent, and therefore as one particular species over against the others whose existence does n o t correspond to their essence. T o democracy a l l other forms o f state stand as its Old Testament. Man does not exist for the law but the law for man-it is a human manifestation; whereas in the other forms of state man is a legal manifestation. That is the fundamental distinction of democracy. All other state forms are definite, distinct, particular forms of state. In democracy the formal principle is at the same time the 2.
Par excellence-i.e., "Christianity is t h e pre-eminent religion."
Contributi on to the Critique
21
material principle. Only democracy, therefore, is the true unity of the general and the particular. In monarchy, for example, and in th e republic as a merely particular form of state, political man has his particular mode of being alongside unpolitical man, man as a private individua1. Property, contract, marriage, civil society, all appear here (as Hegel shows quite correctly with regard to these abstract state forms, but he thinks that he is expounding the idea of the state) as particular modes of existence alongside the political state, as the content to which the political sta.te is related as organ ising form; properly speaking, the relation of the political state to this content is merely that of reason, inherently without content, which defines and delimits, which now affirms and now denies. In democracy the political state, which stands alongside this content and distinguishes itself from it, is itself merely a particular content and particular form of existence of the people. In monarchy, for example, this particular, the political constitution, has the signifi cance of the general that dominates and determines everything par ticular. In democracy the state as particular is merely particular; a s general, it is the truly general, i .e., not something determinate i n distinction from the other content . The French have recently inter preted this as meaning that in true democracy the political sta.te is annihilated. This is correct insofar as the political state qua political state, as constitution, no longer passes for the whole. In all states other than democratic ones the state, the law, the constitution is what rules, without really ruling-i.e ., without mate rially permeating the content of the remaining, non-political spheres. In democracy the constitution, the law, the state itself, insofar as it is a political constitution, is only the self-determination of the people, and a particular content of the people. Incidentally, i t goes without saying that all forms of state have democracy for their truth and that they are therefore untrue insofar as they are not democracy. Politics: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern
In the states of antiquity the political state makes up the content of the state to the exclusion of the other spheres. The modern state is a compromise between the political and the unpolitical state. I n democracy the abstract state has ceased to be the dominant factor. Th e str � ggle between monarchy and republic is itself still a struggle within the abstract state. The political republic is democ racy within the abstract state form. The abstract state form of democracy is therefore the republic; but here it ceases to be the merely political constitution. Property, etc., i n short, the entire content of the law and the
22
The Early Marx
state, is the same in North America as in Prussia, with few modifi cations. The
republic there is
thus a mere state
form,
as is the mon
archy here. The content of the state lies outside these constitutions. Hegel is right, therefore, when he says: The political state is the constitution, i.e., the material state is not political. What obtains here is merelj! an external identity, a determination of changing forms. Of the various elements of national life, the one most difficult to evolve was the political state, the constitution. It devel oped as universal reason over against the other spheres, as ulterior to
them. The historical task then consisted in its [the constitution's]
reassertion, but the particular spheres do not realise that their pri vate nature coincides with the other-worldly nature of the constitu tion or of the political state, and that the other-worldly existence of the political state is nothing but the affirmation of their own
political constitution has been the religion of national life, the heaven of its gener the earthy existence of its actuality. The political
estrangemen t. Up till now the
religious sphere,
the
ality over against
sphere has been the only state sphere in the state, the only sphere in which the content as well as the form has been species-content, the truly general; but in such a way that at the same time, because this sphere has confronted the others, its content has also become
Political life in the modern sense is the scho Monarchy is the perfect expression of this republic is the negation of this estrangement
formal and particular.
lasticism
of national life.
estrangement. The
within its own sphere. It is obvious that the political constitution as such is brought into being only where the private spheres have won an independent existence. Where trade and landed property are not free and have not yet become independent, the political constitu tion too does not yet exist. The Middle Ages were the
democracy of
unfreedom. The abstraction of the
state as such
belongs only to modern
times, because the abstraction of private life belongs only to modern times. The abstraction of the political
state is a modern product.
In the Middle Ages there were serfs, feudal estates, merchant and trade guilds, corporations of scholars, etc.: that is to say, in the Middle Ages property, trade, society, man are
political;
the material
content of the state is given by its form; every private sphere has a political character or is a political sphere; that is, politics is a charac teristic of the private spheres too. In the Middle Ages the political constitution is the constitution of private property, but only because the constitution of private property is a political constitution. In the Middle Ages the life of the nation and the life of the state are iden tical. Man is the actual principle of the state-but thus the
democracy of u nf r eedo m
-
unfree
man. It is
estrange m en t carried to comple
tion. The abstract reflected antithesis belongs only to the modern
Contribution to the Critique
23
world. The Middle Ages are the period of actual dualism; modern times, one of abstract dualism. "We have already noted the stage at which the division of consti tutions into democracy, aristocracy and monarchy has been mad e the s tandpoint, that is, of that unity which is still substantial, which still remains within itself. and has not yet come to its process of infmite differentiation and inner deepening: at that stage, the ele ment of the final self-determining resolution of the will does not emerge explicitly into its own proper actuality as an immanent organic factor in the state . " In th e spontaneously evolved mon archy, democracy and aristocracy there is as yet no political consti tution as distinct from the actual, material state or the other con tent of the life of the nation. The political state does not yet appear as the form of the material state. Either, as in Greece, the res publica3 is the real private affair of the citizens, their real content, and the private individual is a slave; the political state, qua political state, being the true and only content of the life and will of the cit izens; or, as in an Asiatic despotism, the political state is nothing but the personal caprice of a single individual; or the political state, like the material s tate, is a slave. What distinguishes the modern state from these states characterized by the substantial unity between people and state is not, as Hegel would have it, that the various ele�ents of the constitution have been developed into par ticular actuality, but that the constitution itself has been developed into a particular actuality alongside the actual life of the people that the political state has become the constitution of the rest of the s tate . *
*
*
B ureaucr acy
The "state formalism" which bureaucracy is, is the "state as for malism"; and i t is as a formalism of this kind that Hegel has described bureaucracy. Since this "state formalism" constitutes itself as an actual power and itself becomes its own material content, it goes without saying that the "bureaucracy" is a web of practical illusions, or the "illusion of the state. " The bureaucratic s pirit is a jesuitical, theological spirit through and through. The bureaucrats are the jesuits and theologians of the state. The bureaucracy is la republique pretre. Since by its very nature the bureaucracy is the "state as formal ism," it is this also as regards its purpose. The actual p urpose of the state therefore appears to the bureaucracy as an objective hostile to the state. The spirit of the bureaucracy is the "formal state spirit." 3 . I.e., state, republic; etymologically, "public affairs."
24
The Early Marx
The bureaucracy therefore turns the "formal state spirit" or the actual spiritless ness of the state into a categorical imperative. The bureaucracy takes itself to be the ultimate purpose of the state. Because the bureaucracy turns its "formal" objectives into its con tent, it comes into conflict everywhere with "real" objectives. It is therefore obliged to pass off the form for the content and the con tent for the form . State objectives are transformed into objectives of the department, and department objectives into objectives of the state. The bureaucracy is a circle from which no one can escape. I ts hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge. The top entrusts the under standing of detail to the lower levels, whilst the lower levels credit the top with understanding of the general, and so all are mutually deceived. The bureaucracy is the imaginary state alongside the real state the spiritualism of the state. Each thing has therefore a double meaning, a real and a bureaucratic meaning, just as knowledge (and also the will) is both real and bureaucratic. The really existing, however, is treated in the light of its bureaucratic nature, its other worldly, spiritual essence. The bureaucracy has the state, the spirit ual essence of society, in its possession, as its private property. The general spirit of the bureaucracy is the secret, the mystery, preserved within itself by the hierarchy and against the outside world by being a closed corporation . Avowed political spirit, as also political minded ness, therefore appear to the bureaucracy as treason against its mystery. Hence, authority is the basis of its knowledge, and the deification of authority is its conviction. Within the bureaucracy itself, however, spiritualism becomes crass materialism, the material ism of passive obedience, of faith in authority, of the mechanism of fixed and formalistic behaviour, and of fixed principles, views and traditions. In the case of the individual bureaucrat, the state objec tive turns into his private objective, into a chasing after higher posts, the mal�ing of a career. In the first place, he looks on actual, life as something material, for the spirit of this life has its distinctly separate existence in the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy must there fore proceed to make life as material as possible. Secondly, actual life is material for the bureaucrat himself, i .e. , so far as it becomes an object of bureaucratic manipulation; for his spirit is prescribed for him, his aim lies beyond him, and his existence is th e existence of the department. The state only continues to exist as various fixed bureaucratic minds, bound together in subordination and passive obedience. Actual knowledge seems devoid of content, just as actual life seems dead; for this imaginary knowledge and this imaginary life are taken for the real thing. The bureaucrat must therefore deal with the actual state jesuitically, whether this jesuitry is conscious or unconscious . However, once its antithesis is knowledge, this j esuitry
Contribution to the Critique
25
is li k e w ise bound t o achieve self-consciousness and then become de l ibe r ate jesuitry. \V hi l st the bureaucracy is on the one hand t h is crass materialism, it manifests its crass spiritualism in the fact that it wants to do everything, i.e., by making the will the causa prima. For it is purely an act ive form of existence and receives its content from without and can prove its existence, therefore, only by shaping and restrict ing this content. For the bureaucrat the world is a mere object to be manipulated by h i m . When H egel calls the executive the objec ti ve aspect of t h e sover eignty dwelling in the monarch, that is r ight in the same sense in which the Catholic Church was the real presence of the sovereignty, substance and spirit of the Holy Trinity. In the b u re a ucracy the identi ty of state interest and particular private aim is established in such a way that the state interest becomes a particular private aim over against other private aims . The abolition of the bu reaucr a cy is only possible by the general interest actually- and not, as w ith Hegel, merely in thought, in abstraction-b ecoming the particular in t e r est , which in turn is onlv possible as a result of the par ticu lar actually becoming the generdl interes t. Hegel starts from an unreal a ntithesis and therefore achieves only an imaginary iden t i ty which is in truth again a con tr a. dictory identi t y . The bureaucracy is j ust such an identity. *
*
*
On the Jewish Question KARL i\'IARX
In this essay, written in the autumn of
Deutsch-FTanzosische JahTbiicheT,
1843
and published in the
Marx pursued his critical aims through a
review of two studies on the Jewish question by another Young Hegelian, Bruno Bauer. The criticism of politics is developed in the first part, leading to the conclusion that human emancipation requires the ending of the divi sion between man as an egoistic being in "civil society" and man as ab stract citizen in the state. In the second part, Marx proceeds to the criti
cism of economics or commerce, which he equates with "Judaism." His
concluding call for "the emancipation of society from Judaism" (which has been seen on occasion as a manifesto of anti-Semitism) is in fact a call for the emancipation of society from what he here calls "huckstering," or from w hat he was subsequently to call "capitalism." This, however, is not to deny that Marx, although he himself was of Jewish origin, harbored anti Jewish attitudes, nor is it to deny that such attitudes found expression i n this essay.
1.
Bruno Bauer,
Die Judenfrage1
The German Jews seek emancipation. What kind of emancipa tion do they want? Civic, political emancipation. Bru �o Bauer replies to them: In Germany no one is politically emancIpated. We ourselves are not free. How then could we liber ate you? You Jews are egoists if you demand for yourselves, as Jews, a special emancipation. You should work, as Germans, for the p olitical ema�cipation of Germany, and as men, for the emancipa . tIon of mankmd. You should feel the particular kind of oppression and shame which you suffer, not as an exception to the rule but rather as a confirmation of the rul e. Or do t � e Jews � an t to be placed on a footing of equality with . the Chnstwn sub /ects? If they recognize the Christian state as legally established they also recognize the regime of general enslave1.
The Jewish question. [Braunschweig, 1843.-Marxl
26
On the Jewish Question
27
ment. Why should their particular yoke be irksome when they accept the general yoke? 'Vhy should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the libera tion of the German? The Christian state recognizes nothing but privileges. The Jew himself, in this state, has the privilege of being a Jew. As a Jew he possesses rights which the Christians do not have. 'Vhy does he want rights which he does not have but which the Ch ristians enjoy? In demanding his eman cipation from the Christian state he asks the Christian state to abandon its religious prejudice. But does he, the Jew, give up his religious prejudice? Has h e then the right to insist t hat someone else should forswear his religion? The Christian state, by its very nature, is incapable of emancipating the Jew. But, adds Bauer, the Jew, by his very nature, cannot be emancipated . As long as the state remains Christian, and as long as the Jew remains a Jew, they are equally incapable, the one of conferring emancipation, the other o f receiving it. With respect to the Jews the Christian state can only adopt the attitude of a Christian state . That is, it can permit the Jew, as a matter of privilege, to i solate himself from its other subjects; but it must then allow the pressures of all the other spheres of society to bear upon the Jew, and all the more heavily since he is in religious opposition to the dominant religion. But the Jew likewise can only adopt a Jewish attitude, i.e. that of a foreigner, towards the s tate, since he opposes his illusory nationality to actual nationality, his illusory law to actual law. He considers it his right to separate h im self from the rest of humanity; as a matter of principle he takes no part in the historical movement and looks to a future which has nothing in common with the future of mankind as a whole. He regards himself as a member of the Jewish people, and the Jewish people as the chosen peopl e. On what grounds, then, do you Jews demand emancipation? On account of your religion? But it is the mortal enemy of the state religion. As citizens? But there are no citizens in Germany. As men? But you are not men any more than are those to w hom you appeal . Bauer, after criticizing earlier approaches and solutions, formu lates the question of Jewish emancipation in a new way. What, he asks, is the nature of the Jew who is to be emancipated, and the nature of the Christian state which is to emancipate him? He replies by a critique of the Jewish religion, analyses the religious opposition between Judaism and Christianity, explains the essence of the Christian state; and does all this w ith dash, clarity, wit and profundity, in a sty Ie which is as p recise as it is pith y and vigorous .
28
The Early Marx
How then does Bauer resolve the Je\vish question? What is the result? To formulate a question is to resolve it. The critical study of the Jewish question is the answer to the Jewish question. Here it is in brief : we have to emancipate ourselves before we can emancipate others . The most stubborn form of the opposition between Jew and Christian is t h e religious opposition . How is an opposition resolved? By making i t impossible. And how is religious opposition made impossible? By abolishing religion. As soon as Jew and Chris tian come to see in their respective religions nothing more than sta.ges in the development of the human mind-snake skins which have been cast off by history, and man as the snake who clothed h imself in them-they will no longer find themselves in religious opposition, but in a purely critical, scientific and human relation ship. Science will then constitute their unity. B ut scientific opposi tions are resolved by science itself. The German Jew, in particular, suffers from the general lack of political freedom and t h e pronounced Christianity of t h e state . But i n B auer's sense t h e Jewish question has a general significance, independent of the specifically German conditions. I t is the ques tion of the relations between religion and the state, o f the con tradiction between religious pre;udice and political emancipation. Emancipation from religion is posited a s a condition, both f o r the Jew who wants political emancipation, and for the state which should emancipate him and itself be emancipated. "Very well, it may be said ( and the Jew himself says it) but the Jew should not be emancipated because he is a Jew, because he has such an excellent a n d universal moral creed; the Jew shoul d take second place to the citizen, and he will be a citizen although he is and desires to remain a Jew. In other words, he is and remains a Jew, even though he is a citizen and as such lives in a universal human condition; his restricted Jewish nature always finally triumphs over his human and political obligations. The bias persists even though it is overcome by general principles. B ut if i t persists, it would be truer to say that it overcomes all t h e rest ." " I t is only in a sophistical and superficial sense tha t the Jew could remain a Jew in political l ife . Consequently, if he wanted to remain a Jew, this would mean that the superficial became the essential and thus triumphed. In other words, his life in the state would be only a semblance, or a momentary exception to the essential and normal . "2 Let us see also how B auer establishes the role of the s ta te . "France," h e says, "has provided us recent l y,3 in connexion with 2. Bauer, "Die Filhigkeit der heutigen Juden und Christen, frei zu werden," Einundzwanzig Bogen, p. 5 7 . [Marx]
Emphases added by Marx. 3. Chamber of Deputies. Debate 2 6 th December, 184 0 . [Marx]
of
On the Jewish Question
29
the J ewish question ( and for that matter all other political ques tions ) , with the spectacle of a life which is free but which revokes its freedom by law and so declares it to be merely an appearance; and which, on the other hand, denies its free laws by its acts ."4 "In France, universal liberty is not yet established by l aw, nor is the Jewish question as yet resolved, because legal liberty, i .e. the equality of all citizens, is restricted in actual life, which is still dominated and fragmented by religious privileges, and because the lack of liberty in actual life influences law in its turn and obliges it to sanction the division of citizens who are by. nature free into oppressors and oppressed ."5 When, therefore, would the Jewish question be resolved in France? "The Jew would really have ceased to be Jewish, for example, i f h e d i d n o t a l l o w his religions code t o prevent h i s fulfilment of h i s duties towards the state a n d h i s fellow citizens; if he attended and took part i n the public business of the Chamber of Deputies on the sabbath . It would be necessary, further, to abolish all religious priv ilege, including the monopoly of a privileged church . If, thereafter, some or many or even the overwhelming majority felt ob li.ged to fulfil their religious duties, such practices should be left to them as an absolutely private matter."6 "There is no longer any religion when there is no longer a p rivileged religion . Take away from reli gion its power to excommunicate and it will no longer exist."1 "M r . Martin du Nord has seen, in the suggestion to omit a n y men tion of Sunday in the law, a proposal to declare that Christianity has ceased to exist. With equal right ( an d the right is well found ed ) the declaration that the law of the sabbath is no longer bind ing upon the J ew would amount to proclaiming the end of Judaism ."8 Thus Bauer demands, on the one hand, that the Jew should renounce J udaism, and in general that man should renounce reli gion, in order to be emancipated as a citizen . On the other hand, he considers, and this follows logically, that the political abolition of religion is the abolition of all religion. Th e state which ' pre supposes religion is not yet a true or actual state . "Clearly, the reli gious idea gives some assurances to the state . But to what state? To what kind of state?"9 At this point we see that the Jewish question is considered only from one aspect. It was by n o means sufficient to ask : who should emancipate? who sh ould be emancipated? The critic should ask a third question : 4. Bauer, Die Judenjrage, S. Ibi d . p. 6 5 . [Marx] 6. Loc. cit. [Marx] 7. Ibi d . , p . 7 1 . [Marx] ,
p.
6 4 . [Marx]
8. Bauer, Die Juden/rage, [Marx] 9. Ibid., p. 9 7 . [Marx]
p.
66.
30
The Early Marx
what kind of emancipation is involved? What are the essential conditions of the emancipation which is demanded? The criticism of political emancipation itself was only the final criticism of the Jewish question and its genuine resolution into the "general question of the age." Bauer, since he does n o t formulate the problem at this level, falls into contradictions . He establishes conditions which are not based upon the nature of political emancipation . He raises questions which are irrelevant to his problem, and he resolves problems which leave his question unanswered. YVhen B auer says of the opponents of Jewish emancipation that "Their error was simply to assume that the Christian state was the only true one, and not to subject it to the same criticism as J udaism,"l we see his own error in the fact that he subjects only the "Christian state," and not the "state as such" to criticism, that he does not examine the relation between political emancipation and human emancipation, and tha t he, therefore, poses conditions which are only explicable by h is lack of critical sense in confusing political emancipation and universal human emancipation . B auer asks the Jews : Have you, from your standpoint, the right to demand polit ical emancipation? .We ask the converse question : from the s tandpoint of political emancipa tion can the Jew be required to abolish Judaism, or man be asked to abolish religion? The Jewish question presents itself differently according to the state in which the Jew resides . In Germany, where there is no polit ical state, no state as such, the Jewish question is purely theologi cal. The Jew finds himself in religious opposition to the state, which proclaims Christianity as its foundation. This state is a theo logian ex professo . Criticism here is criticism of theology; a dou ble-edged criticism, of Christian and of Jewish theology. And so we move always in the domain of theology, however critically we may move therein . In France, which is a constitutional state, the Jewish question is a question of constitutionalism, of the incompleteness of political emancipation . Since the semblance of a state religion is maintained here, if only in the insignificant and self-contradictory formula of a religion of the ma;ority, the relation of the Jews to the state also retains a semblance of religious, theological op positio n . I t i s only in the free states o f North America, or at least in some of them, that the Jewish question loses its theological significance and becomes a truly secular question . Only where the state exists in its completely developed form can the relation o f the Jew, and of the religious man in general, to the political state appear i n a p ure form, with its own characteristics . The criticism of this relation 1. Bauer, Die /uden/rage, p. 3. [Marx]
On the Jewish 'Question
31
ceases to be theological criticism when the state ceases t o maintain a theological attitude towards religion, that is, when it a dopts the attitude of a state, i .e . a political attitude . Criticism then becomes criticism of the political state. And at this point, where the ques tion ceases to be theological, Bauer's criticism ceases to be critical. "There is not, in the United States, either a state religion or a religion declared to be that of a majority, or a predominance of one religion over another. The state remains aloof from all re1igions ."2 There are even some states in North America in which "the consti tution does not impose any religious belief or practice as a condi tion of political rights ."s And yet, "no one in the United States believes that a man without religion can be an honest man."4 And North America is pre-eminently the country of religiosity, as Beau mont," Tocqueville6 and the Englishman, Hami1ton ,7 assure us in unison . However, the states of North America only serve as an example. The question is : what is the relation between complete political emancipation and religion? If we find in the country which has attained full political emancipation, that religion n ot only continues to exist but is fresh and vigorous, this is p roof that the existence of religion is not at all opposed to the perfection of the state . B u t since the existence of religion is the existence of a defect, the source of this defect must be sought in the nature of the state itsel f. Religion no longer appears as the basis, but as the manifestation o f secular narrowness. That is why we explain the religious constraints upon the free citizens by the secular con straints upon them . We do not claim that they must transcend their religious narrowness in order to get rid of their secular limita tions . We claim that they will transcend their religious narrowness once they have overcome their secular limitations. We do not turn secular questions into theological questions; we turn theological questions into secular ones . History has for long enough been resolved into superstition; but we now resolve superstition into h is tory. The question of the relation between political emancipation and religion becomes for us a question of the relation between · political emancipation and human emancipation. · We criticize the religious failings of the political state by criticizing the political state in its secular form, disregarding its religious failings . We express in human terms the contradiction between the state and a particular religion, for example Judaism, by showing the contradicZ. Gustave de Bel!umont, Marie ou l'es clavage aux Etats-Unis, B ruxelles, 1 8 3 5 , Z vols., II, p . 2 0 7 . [Marx) Marx refers to another edition, Paris, 1 8 3 5 . 3. I b i d., p. 2 1 6 . B ea u m ont actually re fers to all the States of North Amer
ica.
4. Ibid.,
p.
2 1 7 . [Marx)
5. G .
de Beaumont, op . cit.
[Marx]
6. A . de TocqueviIIe, De la democratie
en A m erique. [Marx] 7. Thomas Hamilton, Men and Man ners in North A merica, Ed i n b u rg h , 1 8 3 3 , 2 vols. [Marx] Marx quotes from the German translation, Mannheim. 1 8 34.
32
The Early Marx
tion between the state and particular secular elements, between the state and religion in general and between the state and its general presuppositions. The political emancipation of the Jew or the Christian-of the religious man in general-is the emancipation of the state from Judaism, Christianity, and religion in general. The state emanci pates itself from religion in its own particular way, in the mode which corresponds to its nature, by emancipating itself from the state religion; that is to say, by giving recognition to n o religion and affirming itself purely and simply as a state . To be politically emancipated from religion is not to be finally and completely emancipated from religion, because political emancipation is not the final and absolute form of human emancipation. The limits of political emancipation appear at once in t h e fact that the state can liberate itself from a constraint without man himself being really liberated; that a state may be a free state with out man himself being a free man. B auer h imsel f tacitly admits this when he makes political emancipation depend upon the following condition"It would be necessary, moreover, to abolish all religious privi leges, including the monopoly of a privileged church . If some people, or even the immense majority, still felt obliged to fulfil their religious duties, this practice should be left to them as a c om pletely private matter." Thus the state may have emancipated itself from religion, even though the immense majority of people con tinue to be religio us . And the immense majority do not cease to be religious by virtue of being religious in private. The attitude of the state, especially the free state, towards reli gion is only the attitude towards religion of the individuals who compose the state . It follows that man frees himself from a con straint in a political way, through the state, when he transcends h i s limitations, in contradiction with himself, and in an abstract, narrow and partial way. Furthermore, by emancipating himself po litically, man emancipates himself in a devious way, through an intermediary, however necessary this intermediary may be. Finally, even when he proclaims himself an atheist through the intermedi ary of the stat e, that is, when he declares the state to be an atheist, he is still engrossed in religion, because he only recognizes himself as an atheist in a roundabout way, through an intermediary . Reli gion is simply the recognition of man in a roundabout fashion ; that is, through an intermediary. The state is the intermediary between man and human liberty. Just as Christ is the intermediary to whom man attributes all his own divinity and all his religious bonds, so the state is the intermediary to which man confides all his non divinity and all his human freedom .
On the Jewish Question
33 '
The political elevation of man above religion shares the weak nesses and merits of all such political measures . For example, the state as a state abolishes private property (i .e. man decrees by polit ical means the abolition of private property ) when it abolishes the p roperty qualification for electors and representatives, as has been done in many of the North American States . Hamilton interprets this phenomenon quite correctly from the political standpoint : The masses have gained a victory over property owners and financial wealth.8 Is not private property ideally abolished when the non· owner comes to legislate for the owner of property? The property qualification is the last political form in which private property is recogn ized . But the political suppression of private property not only does not abolish private property; it actually presupposes its existence. The state abolishes, after its fashion, the distinctions established by birth, social rank, education, occupation, when it decrees that birth, social rank, education, occupation are non-political distinc tions; when it proclaims, without regard to these distinctions, that every member of society is an equal partner i n popular sovereignty, and treats all the elements which compose the real life of the nation from the standpoint of the state. B ut the state, none the less, allows private property, education, occupation, to act after their own fashion, namely as private property, education, occupation, and to manifest their particular nature . Far from abolishing these effective differences, it only exists so far as they are presupposed; it i s conscious o f being a political state and it manifests its universal ity only in opposition to these elements. Hegel, therefore, defines the relation of the political state to religion quite correctly when he says : "In order for the state to come in to existence as the self knowing ethical actuality of spirit, it is essential that it should be distinct from the forms of authority and of faith . But this distinc tion emerges only in so far as divisions occur within the ecclesiasti cal sphere itsel f. It is only in this way that the state, above the par ticular churches, has attained to the universality of thought-its formal principle-and is bringing this universality into existence."9 To be sure ! Only in this manner, above the particular elements, can the state constitute itself as universality. The perfected political state is, by its nature, the species-lifel of 8. H a m i l t o n , op. c i t . , I , p p . 2 8 8 , 3 0 6 , 3 0 9 . [Marx] 9 . Hegel, Grundlinien der P hilosophie des Rechts, Ier Aufgabe, 1 8 2 1 , p . 3 4 6 . { Marx] See t h e English translation by T. M. Knox, Hegel's Philosophy oj Right, O x f o r d , 1 94 2 , p. 1 7 3 . 1 . The terms "species-life" ( G attungsle b e n ) and "species-being" ( Gattungswe sen) are derived from Feuerbach. In
the
first chapter of Das Wesen des oj Christentums Essence [The Christianity], Leipzig, 1 84 1 , Feuerbach
discusses the nature of man, and argues that m a n is to be distinguished from animals not by "consciousness" as s uch , but by a particular kind of consciousness. M a n is n o t only con scious of himself as an individual ; h e is also c o n s c i o u s o f himself as a m e m -
34
The Early Marx
man as opposed to his material life . All the presuppositions of this egoistic life continue to exist in civil society outside the political sphere, as qualities of civil society. \Vhere the political state has attained to its full development, man leads, not only in thought, in consciousness, but in reality, in life, a double existence-celestial and terrestrial . He lives in the political community, where he regards himself as a communal being, and in civil society where he acts simply as a private individual, treats other men as means, degrades h imself to the role of a mere means, and becomes the plaything of alien powers . The political state, in relation to civil society, is j ust as spiritual as is heaven in relation to earth . It stands in the same opposition to civil society, and overcomes it in the same manner as religion overcomes the narrowness of the profane world; i .e. it has always to acknowledge it again, re-establish it, and allow itself to be dominate d by it. Man, in his most intimate real ity, in civil society, is a profane being . Here, where he appears both to h imself and to others as a real individual he is an illusory phe nomenon . In the state, on the contrary, where h e is regarded as a species-being,2 man is the imaginary member of an imaginary sov ereignty, divested of his real, individual life, and infused with an unreal universality. The conflict in which the individual, as the p rofessor of a partic ular religion, finds himself involved with his own quality of citi zenship and with other men as members of the community, may be resolved into the secular schism between the political state and civil society. For man as a bourgeois3 "life in the state is only an appearance or a fleeting exception to the normal and essential." It is true that the bour.geois, like the Jew, participates in p olitical life only in a sophistical way, just as the citoyen4 is a J ew or a bour geois only in a sophistical way. But this sopbistry is not personal. I t · i s the sophistry o f t h e political state itself. The difference between the religious man and the citizen is the same as that between the shopkeeper and the citizens, between the day-labourer and the citi zen, between the landed proprietor and the citizen, between the living individual and the citizen. The contradiction in which the religious man finds himself with the political man, is the sam e con tradiction in which the bourgeois finds himself with the citizen, and the member o f civil society with his political lion's skin . ber of the human species, and so he apprehends a "human essence" which is the same in h i m s e l f and in other m en. A c c o r d i n g t o Feuerbach this a b i l i t y to conceive o f "species" is the fundamen tal element i n the human power o f rea s o n i n g : "Science is t h e consciousness of species." Marx, wh i le n o t departing from this meaning o f the terms, em ploys them in other contexts : and he insists more strongly than Feuerbach
that since this "species-consciousness" defines the nature of man, m a n i s only l i v i n g a n d acting authentically ( i . e . in accordance with h i s n a t u r e ) when h e l i ves and acts d e lib e r a t e l y as a "spe cies-being," t h a t i s , as a social b e i n g . 2. See previous note. 3. I.e. as a member o f civil s o c i e t y . 4. I . e . the i n d i v i d u a l with political rights.
On the Jewish Questio n
35
This secular opposItion, t o which the Jewish question reduces it self-the relation between the political state and its presupposi tions, whether the latter are material elements such as private prop erty, etc. , or spiritual elements such as culture or religion, the con flict between the general inter,est and private interest, the schism between the political state and civil society-these profane contra dictions, Bauer leaves intact, while he directs his polemic against their religious expression . "It is precisely this basis-that is, the needs which assure the existence of civil society and guarantee its necessi ty which exposes its existence to continual danger, m ain tains an element of uncertainty in civil society, produces this con tinually changing compound of wealth and pm·erty, of prosperity and distress, and above all generates change."5 Compare the whole section entitled "Civil society,"6 which follows closely the distinc tive features of Hegel's philosophy of right. Civil society, in its opposition to this political state, is recognized as necessary because the political state is recognized as necessary. Political emancipation certainly represents a great progress . It is not, indeed, the final form of h uman emancipation, but it is the final form of human emancipation within the framework of the prevail ing social order. It goes without saying that we are speaking here of real, practical emancipation. Man emancipates himself politically from religion by expelling it from the sphere of public law to that of private law. Religion is no longer the spirit of t he state, in which man behaves, albeit in a spe cific and limited way and in a particular sphere, as a species-being, in community with other men . It has become the spirit of civil society, of the sphere of egoism and of the bellum omnium contra omnes. It is no longer the essence of community, but the essence of differentiation. It has become what it was at the beginning, an expression of the fact that man is separated from the community, ' from himself and from other me n. It is now only the abstract ' avowal of an individual folly, a private w him or caprice . The infinite fragmentation of religion in North America, for example; already gives it the external form of a strictly private affair. It has been relegated among the numerous private interests and exiled from the life of the community as such . B ut one should have no illusions about the scope of poli tical emancipation . The division 'Of man into the public person and the private person, the displace ment of religion from the state to civil society-all this is not a stage in political emancipation but its consummation. Thus politi cal emancipa tion does not abolish, and does not even strive to abol ish, man's real religiosity. The decomposition of man into Jew and citizen, Protestant and citizen, religious man and citizen, is not a deception practised -
s . Bauer, Die Juden/rage, p .
8.
[Marx]
6 . Ibid., pp. 8-9 . [Marx]
36
The Early Marx
against the political system nor yet an evasion of political emancipa tion. It is political emancipation itself, the political mode of eman cipation from religion . Certainly, in periods when the political state as such comes violently to birth in civil society, and when men strive to liberate themselves through political emancipation, the state can, and must, proceed to abolish and destro), religion; but only in the same way as it proceeds to abolish p rivate property, by declaring a maximum, by confiscation , or by progressive taxation, or in the same wa y as i t p roceeds to abolish life, by the guillotine . At those times when the state is most aware of itself, political life seeks to stifle its own prerequisites-civil society and its elements-and to establish itself as the genuine and harmonious species-life of man. B ut it can only achieve this end by setting itself i n violent contradiction with its own conditions o f existence, by declaring a permanent revol ution . Thus the political drama ends necessarily with the restoration of religion, of private property, of all the elements of civil society, just as war ends with the conclu sion of peace . In fact, the perfected Christian state is not the so-called Chris tian s tate w � jch acknowledges Christianity as its basis, as the state religion , and thus adopts an exclusive attitude towards other religions; it is, rather, the atheistic state, the democratic state, the state which relegates religion among the other elements of civil so ciety. The state which is still theological, which still p rofesses officially the Christian creed, and which has not yet dared to declare itself a state, has not yet succeeded in expressing in a h uman and secular form, in its p oli tical reality, th e h uman basis of which Chris tianity is the transcendental expression . The so-called Christian state is simply a non-state; since it is not Christianity as a religion, but only the human core o f the Christian religion which can realize itself in truly h uman creations . The so-called Christian state i s the Christian negation of the state, but not at all the political realization of Christianity. The s tate which professes Christianity a s a religion does not yet profess it in a political form, because it still has a religious attitude towards religion . In other words, such a state is not the genuine realization of the human basis of religion, because it still accepts the unreal, imaginary form of this human core. The so-called Christian state is an imperfect state, for which the Christian religion serves as the supplement and sanctification of its imperfection . Thus religion becomes necessarily one of its means; and so it is the hypocritical state . There is a great difference between saying : ( i ) that the per fect state, owing to a deficiency in the general nature of the state, counts religion as one of its prerequisites, or ( ii ) that the imperfect
On the Jewish Question
37
state, owing to a deficiency in i t s particular existence as an imper fect state, declares that religion is its basis. I n the latter, religion becomes imperfect politics. I n the former, the imperfection even of perfected politics is revealed in religion. The so-called Christian state needs the Christian religion in order to complete itself as a state . The democratic state, the real state, does not need religion for its political consummation . On the contrary, it can dispense with religion, because in this case the human core of religion is realized in a profane manner. The so-called Christian state, on the other hand, has a political attitude towards religion, and a religious attitude towards p olitics. It reduces political institutions and reli gion equally to mere appearances . In order to make this contradiction clearer we shall examine Bauer's model of the Christian state, a model which is derived from his study of the German-Christian state. " Quite recently," says Bauer, "in order to demonstrate the impossibility or the non-existence of a Christian state, those pas sages in the Bible have been frequently quoted with which the sta te does not conform and cannot conform unless it wishes to dis solve itself entirely ." "But the q uestion is not so easily settled. What do these Bibli c al passages demand? Supernatural renunciation, submission to the authority of revelation, turning away from the state, the abolition of profane conditions . B ut the Christian state proclaims and accomplishes all these things. I t has assimilated the spirit of the Bible, and if it does not reproduce it exactly in the terms which the Bible uses, tha t is simply because it expresses this spirit in political forms, in forms which are borrowed from the political system of this world but which, in the religious rebirth which they are obliged to ul).dergo, are reduced to simple appearances. Man turns away from the state and by this means realizes and completes the political institutions ."7 Bauer continues b y showing that t h e members of a Christian state no longer constitute a nation with a will of its own . The nation has its true existence in the leader to whom it is subjected; but this leader is, by his origin and nature, alien to it since he has been imposed by God without the people having any part i n the matter. The laws of such a nation are not its own work, but are direct revelations . The s upreme leader, in his relations with the real nation, the masses, requires privileged intermediaries; and the nation itself disintegrates into a multitude of distinct spheres which are formed and determined by chance, are differentiated from each other by their interests and their specific passions and p reju7 . Bauer, Die luden/rage, p. 5 5 . [Marx]
38
The Early Marx
dices, and acquire as a p rivilege the permission to isolate themselves from each other, etc .S But Bauer himself says : "Politics, if i t is to be nothing more than religion, should not be politics; any more than the scouring of pans, if it is treated as a religious matter, should be regarded as ordi nary housekeeping ."9 But in the German-Christian state religion is an "economic matter" just as "economic matters" are religion . I n the German-Christian state the p ower o f religion is the religion o f power. The separation of the "spirit of the Bible" from the "letter of the Bible" is an irreligious act. The state which expresses the Bible in the letter of politics, or in any letter other than that of the Holy Ghost, commits sacrilege, if not in the eyes of men at least in the eyes of its own religion . The state which acknowledges the Bible as its charter and Christianity as its supreme rule must be assessed according to the words of the Bible; for even the language of the Bible is sacred. Such a state, as well as the human rubbish upon which it is based, finds itself involved in a painful contradiction, which is insoluble from the standpoint of religious consciousness, when it is referred to those words of the Bible "with which it does not conform and cannot conform unless it wishes to dissolve itself entirely." And why does it not wish to dissolve itself entirely? The state itself cannot answer either itself or others. In its own con sciousness the official Christian state is an "ought" whose realiza tion is imposible . It cannot affirm the reality of its own existence without lying to itself, and so it remains always in its own eyes an object of doubt, an uncertain and problematic object. Criticism is, therefore, entirely within its rights in forcing the state, which supports itself upon the Bible, into a total disorder of thought in which it no longer knows whether it is illusion or reality; and ' in which the infamy of its profane ends ( for which religion serves as a cloak ) enter into an insoluble conflict with the probity of its reli gious consciousness ( for which religion appears as the goal of the world ) . Such a state can only escape its inner torment by becoming the myrmidon of the Catholic Church. In the face of this Church, which asserts that secular power is entirely subordinate to its com mands, the state is powerless; powerless the secular power which claims to be the .rule of the religious s pirit. \\That prevails in the so-called Christian state is not man but alienation . The only man who counts-the King is specifically dif ferentiated from other men and is still a religious being associated . directly with heaven and with God . The relations which exist here are relations still based upon faith. The religious spirit is still not really secularized . -
8 . Ib i d . , p. 5 6 . [Marx]
9. Ibi d . ,
p.
1 08 .
[Marx]
On the Jewish Question
39
But the religious spirit cannot be really secularized. For what is it but the non-secular form of a stage in the development of the human spirit? The religious spirit can only be realized if the stage of development of the human spirit which it expresses in religious form, manifests and constitutes itself in its secular form . This is what happens in the democratic state . The basis of this state is not Christianity but the human basis of Christianity. Religion remains the ideal, non-secular consciousness of its members, because it is the ideal form of the stage of human development which has been attained . The members of the political state are religious because of the dualism between individual life and s pecies-life, between the life of civil society and political life . They are religious in the sense that man treats political life, which is remote from his own individual existence, as if it were his true life; and in the sense that religion is here the spirit of civil society, and expresses the separation and withdrawal of man from man . Political democracy is Christian in the sense that man, not merely one man but every man, is there considered a sovereign being, a supreme being; but it is unedu cated, unsocial man, man just as h e is in his fortuitous existence, man as he has been corrupted, lost to himself, alienated, subjected to the rule of inhuman conditions and elements, by the whole organization of our society-in short man who is not yet a real spe cies-being. Creations of fantasy, dreams, the postulates o f Christian ity, the sovereignty of man-but of man as an alien being distin guished from the real man-all these become, in democracy, the tangible and present reality, secular maxims. In the perfected democracy, the religious and theological con sciousness appears to itself all the more religious and theological in that it is apparently without any political significance or terrestrial aims, is an affair of the heart withdrawn from the world, an expres sion of the limitations of reason, a product of arbitrariness and fan tasy, a veritable life in the beyon d . Christianity here attains the practical expression of its universal religious significance, because the most varied views are brought together in the form of Chris tianity, and still more because Christianity does not ask that anyone should profess Christianity, but simply that he should have some kind of religion ( see B eaumont, op. cit. ) . The religious con sciousness runs riot in a wealth of contradictions and diversity. \Ve have shown, therefore, that political emancipation from reli gion leaves religion in existence, although this is no longer a privi leged religio n . The contradiction in which the adherent of a particu lar religion finds himself in relation to his citizenship is only one aspect of the universal secular contradiction between the p olitical state and civil society. The consummation of the Christian state is
40
The Early Marx
a state which ackn owledges itself simply as a state and ignores the religion of its members . The emancipation of the state from reli gion is not the emancipation of the real man from religion . We do not say to the Jews, therefore, as does Bauer : you cannot be emancipated politica lly without emancipating yourselves com pletely from Judaism. \Ve say rather : it is because you can be emancipated politically, without renouncing J udaism completely and absolutely, that political emancipation itself is not human emancipation . If you want to be politically emancipated, with out emancipating yourselves humanly, the inadequacy and the contra diction is not entirely in yourselves but in the nature and the cate gory of political emancipation. If you are preoccupied with this cat egory you share the general prejudice . Just as the state evangelizes when, although it is a state, it adopts a Christian attitude towards the J ews, the Jew acts politically when, though a Jew, he demands civil rights . B u t if a man, though a Jew, can be emancipated politically an d acquire civil rights, c a n he claim a n d acquire what a r e called the rights of man? Bauer denies it. "The question is whether the Jew as such, that is, the Jew who h imself avows tha t he is constrained by his true nature to live eternally separate from men, is able to acquire and to concede to others the universal rights of man." "The idea of the rights of man was only discovered in the Chris tian world, in the lilSt century. It is not an innate idea; on the con trary, 'it is acquired in a struggle against the historical traditions in which man has been educated up to the p res.e nt time. The rights of man are not, therefore, a gift of nature, n or a leg
On the Jewish Question
41
covered them, the North Americans a n d the French ! These rights of man are, in part, political rights, which can only be exercised if one is a member of a community. Their content is participation in the community life, in the political life of the community, the life of the state. They fall in the category of political liberty, of civil rights, which as we have seen do not at all p resuppose the consist ent and positive abolition of religion; nor consequently, of J udaism. I t remains to consider the other part, namely the rights of man as distinct from the rights of t h e citizen. Among them is to be found the freedom of conscience, the right to practise a ch osen religion . The privilege of faith is expressly recognized, either as a right of man or as a consequence of a right of man, namely liberty. Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1 79 1 , Article 1 0 : "No one is to be disturbed on account of his opinions, even religious opinions ." There is guaran teed, as one of the rights of man, "the liberty of every man to prac tise the religion to which he adheres. " The Declaration o f the Rights o f Man, etc . 1 79 3 , enumerates among the rights of man (Article 7 ) : "The liberty of religious observance ." Moreover, it is even stated, with respect to the right to express ideas and opinions, to h old meetings, to practise a reli gion, that : "The necessity of enunciating these rights presupposes either the existence or the recent memory of despotism ." Compare the Constitution of 1 79 5 , Section XII, Article 3 54 . Constitution o f Pennsylvania, Article 9 , S 3: "All m e n h ave received from nature the imprescriptible right to worship the Almighty according to the dictates of their conscience, and no one can be legally compelled to follow, establish or support against his will any religion or religious ministry . No human authority can, in any circumstances, intervene in a matter of conscience or control the forces of the soul . " Constitution o f N e w Hampshire, Articles 5 a n d 6 : "Among these natural rights some are by nature inalienable since nothing can replace them . The rights of conscience are among them ."2 The incompatibility between religion and the rights of man is so little manifest in the concept of the rights of man that the right to be religious, in one's own fashion, and to practise one's own partic ular religion, is expressly included among the rights of man. The privilege of faith is a universal right of man. A distinction is made between the rights of man and the rights of the citizen . Who is this man distinct from the citizen? No one but the member of civil society. \Vhy is the member of civil society called "man," simply man, and why are his rights called the "rights of man"? How is this fact to be explained? By the relation between 2. Beaumont, op. cit., II, pp. 2 0 6- 7 . [Marx]
42
'
The Early Marx
.
the political state and civil society, and by the nature of political emancipation Let us notice first of all that the so-called rights of man, as dis tinct from the rights of the citizen, are simply the rights of a member of civil society, that is, of egoistic man, of man separated f rom other men and from the community. The most radical consti tution, that of 1 79 3 , says : Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen: Article 2. "These righ ts, etc. ( the natural and impre scriptible rights ) are : equality, liberty, s ecurit y property. \Vhat constitutes liberty? Article 6. " L iberty is the power which man has to do everything which does not harm the rights of others " Liberty is, there fore, the righ t to do everything which does not harm others. The limits within which each individual can act with out harming others are determined by law, j ust as the boundary between two fields is marked by a stake. I t is a question of the lib erty of man regarded as an isolated monad, withdrawn into himself. \Vhy, according to Bauer, is the Jew not fitted to acquire the rights of man? "As long as he remains Jewish the limited nature which makes him a Jew must prevail over the human nature which should associate him, as a man, with other men; and it will isolate him from everyone who is no t a Jew." B ut liberty as a right o f man is not founded upon the relations between man and man, but rather upon the separatio n of man from man . It is the right of such separ ation . The right of the circumscribed individual, withdrawn into himse l f The practical applic a tion of the right of liberty is the right of private property. What constitutes the r ight of private property ? Article 1 6 ( Co nstitution of 1 79 3 ) ' "The right of property is that which belongs to every citizen of enjoying and disposing as he will of his goods and revenues, of the fruits of his work and ind u stry " The r ight of property is, therefore, t h e right to enjoy one's for tune and to dispose of it as one will; without regard for other men and independently of society. It is the right o f self-interest. This i n dividu a l liberty, and its application, form the basis of civil society. It leads every man to see in other men, not the realization, b ut rather the limitation of his own liberty. It declares above all the right " to enjoy and to dis p ose as one will, one's goods and revenues, the fruits of one's work and industry." There remain the other rights of man, equality and se c urity The term "equality" has here no political significance . I t is only the equal right to liberty as defined above; namely that every man is equally regarded a s a self s u ffi c ient monad. The Constitution of 1 79 , defines the concept of libert y in this sense. .
,
.
.
.
.
.
-
O n the Jewish Question
43
Article 5 ( Constitution of 1 7 9 5 ) ' "Equality consists in the fact that the law is the same for all, whether it protects or punishes . " A n d security? Article 8 ( C onstitution of 1 7 9 3 ) ' " Security consists in the pro tection afforded by society to each o f its members for the preserva tion of his person, his rights, and his property." Security is the supreme social concept of civil society; the con cept of the police . The whole society exists only in order to guaran tee for each of its members the preservation of his person, his rights and his property. I t is in this sense that Hegel calls civil society "the state of n eed and of reason." The concept of security is n o t enough t o raise civil society above its egoism. Security is, rather, the assurance of its egoism . Nope of the supposed rights of man, therefore, go beyond the egoistic man, man as he is, as a member of civil society; that is, an individual separated from the community, withdrawn into himself, wholly preoccupied with his private interest and acting in accord ance with his private caprice . Man is far from being considered, in the rights of man, as a species-being; on the contrary, species-life itself-society-appears as a system which is external to the indi vidual and as a limitation of h is original independence. The only bond between men is natural necessity, need and private interest, the presenlation of their property and their egoistic persons. It is difficult enough to understand that a nation which has just begun to liberate itself, to tear down all the barriers between differ ent sections of the people and to establish a political community, should solemnly proclaim ( Declaration of 1 7 9 1 ) the rights of the egoistic man, separated from his fellow men and from the commu nity, and should renew this proclamation at a moment when only the most heroic devotion can save the nation ( and is, therefore, urgently called for ) , and when the sacrifice of all the interests of civil society is in question and egoism should be p unished as a crime. (Declaration of the Rights of Man, etc. 1 7 9 3 ) ' The matter becomes still more incomprehensible when we observe that the political liberators reduce citizenship, the political community, to. a mere means for preserving these so-called rights of man; and conse quently, that the citizen is declared to be the servant of egoistic "man, " that the sphere in which man functions as a species-being is degraded to a level below the sphere where he functions as a par tial being, and finally that it is man as a bourgeois and not man as a citizen who is considered the true and authentic man . "The end of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man . " ( Declaration of the Rights of Man, e tc. 1 79 1 , Article 2 . ) "Government is instituted in
44
The Early Marx
order to guarantee man's enjoyment of his natural and imprescripti ble rights . " (Declaration, etc. 1 79 3 , Article 1 . ) Thus, even in the period of its youthful enthusiasm, which is raised to fever p i tch by the force of circumstances, political life declares itself to be only a means, whose end is the life of civil society. It is true that its revo l u tionary practice is in flagrant contradiction with its theory. \"hile, for instance, security is declared to be one of the rights of man, the violation of the privacy of correspondence is openly con sidered . '''hile the "unlimited freedom of the Press" ( Constitution of 1 79 3 , Article 1 2 2 ) , as a corollary of the right of individual lib erty, is guaranteed, the freedom of the Press is completely destroyed, since "the freedom of the Press should not be permitted when it endangers public liberty."3 This amounts to saying : the right to liberty ceases to be a right as soon as it comes into conflict with political life, whereas in theory political life is no more than the guarantee of the rights of man-the rights of the individual man-and should, therefore, be suspended as soon as it comes into contradiction with its end, these rights of man . B ut practice is only the exception, while theory is the rule. Even if one decided to regard revolutionary practice as the correct expression of this rela tion, the problem would remain as to why it is that in the minds of political liberators the relation is inverted, so that the end appears as the means and the means as the end? This optical illusion of their consciousness would always remain a problem, though a psy chological and theoretical one . But the problem is easily solved. Political emancipation is at the same time the dissolution of the old society, upon which the sovereign power, the alienated political life of the people, rests . Political r evolution is a revolution of civil society. \Vhat was the nature of the old society? It can be charac terized in one word : feudalism. The old civil society had a directly political character; that is, the elements of civil life such as prop erty, the family, and types of occupation had been raised, in the form of lordship, caste and guilds, to elements of political life. They determined, in this form, the relation of the individual to the state as a whole; that is, his political situation, or in other words, his separation and exclusion from the other elements of society. For this organization of national life did not constitute property and labour as social elements; it rather succeeded in separating them from the body of the state, and made them distinct societies within society. Nevertheless, at least in the feudal sense, the vital func tions and conditions of civil society remained political. They excluded the individual from the body of the state, and trans formed the particular relation which existed between his corpora3. Buchez et Roux, "Robes pierre jeune," Histoire parlementaire de la
R e v olution /ranfaise, T o m e XXVIII, p. 1 5 9 . [Marxl
On the Jewish Questio n
45
tion and the state into a general relation between the individual and social life, j ust as they transformed his specific civil activity and situation into a general activity and situation. As a result of this organization, the state as a whole and its consciousness, will and activity-the general political power-also necessarily appeared as the private affair of a ruler and his servants, separated from the pe ople. The political revolution which overthrew this power of the ruler, which made state affairs the affairs of the people, and the political state a matter of general concern, i . e . a real state, necessarily shat tered everything-estates, corporations, guilds, privileges-which expressed the separation of the people from community life . The political revolution therefore abolished the political character of civil society. It dissolved civil society into its basic elements, on the one hand individuals, and on the other hand the material and cul tural elements which formed the life experience and the civil situa tion of these individuals. I t set free the political spirit which had, so to speak, been dissolved, fragmented and lost in the various culs-de-sac of feudal society; it reassembled these scattered frag ments, liberated the political spirit from its connexion with civil life and made of it the community sphere, the general concern of the people, in principle independent of these particular elements of civil life. A specific activity and situation in life no longer had any but an individual significance. They no longer constituted the gen eral relation between the individual and the state as a whole. Public affairs as s uch became the general affair of each individual, and political functions became general functions . B u t the consummation of the idealism of the state was at the same time the consummation of the materialism of civil society. The bonds which had restrained the egoistic spirit of civil society were removed along with the political yoke. Political emancipation was at the same time an emancipation of civil society from politics and from even the semblance of a general content. Feudal society was dissolved into its basic element, man; but int() egoistic man who was its real foundation . Man in this aspect, the member of civil society, is now the foun dation and presupposition of the political state. He is recognized as such in the rights of man . B ut the liberty of egoistic man, and the recognition of this lib erty, is rather the recognition of the frenzied movement of the cul tural and material elements which form the content of his life. Thus man was not liberated from religion; he received religious liberty. He was not liberated from property; he received the l iberty to own property. He was not liberated from the egoism of business; he received the liberty to engage in business . The formation of the political state, and the dissolution of civil
46
The Early Marx
society into independent individuals whose relations are regulated by law, as the relations between men in the corporations and guilds were regulated by privilege, are accomplished by one and the same act. Man as a membe r of civil society non politi cal man necessarily appears as the natural man . The rights of man appear as natural rights because conscious activity is concentrated upon polit ical action. Egoistic man is the passive, given result of the dissolu-. tion of society, an object of direct apprehension and consequently a natural object. The political revolution dissolves civil society into its elements without revolutionizing these elements themselves or s ubjecting them to critici sm. Th is revolution regards civil society, the 'sphere of human needs, labour, private interests and civil law, as the basis of its own existence, as a self-subsistent precondition, and thus as its natural basis. Finally, man as a member of civil society is identified with authentic man, man as distinct from citi zen, because he is man in his sensuous, individual and immediate existence, whereas political man is only abstract, artificial man, man as an allegorical, moral person. Thus man as he really is, is seen only in the form of egoistic man, and man in his true nature only in the form of the abstract citizen . The abstract notion of political man is well formulated by Rous seau : "Whoever dares undertake to establish a people's institutions m ust feel himself capable of changing, as it were, human nature itself, of transforming each individual who, in isolation, is a com plete but solitary whole, into a part of something greater than him self, from which in a sense, he derives his life and his being; [of changing man's nature in order to strengthen it;] of substituting a limited and moral existence for the physical and independent life [with which all of us are endowed by nature] . His task, in short, is to take from a man his own powers, and to give him in exchange alien powers which he can only employ with the help of other m en ."4 Every emancipation is a restoration of the human wo rld and of human relationships to man himself. Political emancipation is a reduction of man, on the one hand to a member of civil society, an independent and egoistic individual, and on the other hand, to a citizen, to a moral person . H uman emancipation will only be complete when the real, indi vidual man has absorbed into himself the abstract citizen; when as an individual man, in his everyday life, in his work, and in his rela tionships, he has become a species-being; and when he has recog n ized and organized his own powers (forces propres) as social powers so that he no longer separates this social power from him self as political power. -
4. J. ]. Rousseau, Du contrat social, B ook II. Chapter VII, "The Legisla ' tor . " Marx q uo ted this passage in
-
French, and added the emphases ; he omitted the portions enclosed in square brackets.
On the Jewish Question
47
Bruno B auer, "Die Fahigkeit der heu tigen J uden und Christen frei zu werden"5
2.
I t i s in this form that Bauer studies the relation between the and also their relation with modern criticism This latter relation is their relation with the capacity to become free." He reaches this conclusion : "The Christian has only to raise himself one degree, to rise above his religion, in order to abolish religion in general," and thus to become free; but "the Jew, on the contrary, has to break not only with his Jewish nature, but also with the process towards the consummation o f his religion, a proc ess which has remained alien to him."6 Thus Bauer here transforms the question of J ewish emancipation into a purely religious question The theological doubt about whether the Jew or the C h ris t ian has the better chance of attai n ing salvation is reproduced here in the more enlightened form : which of the two is more capable of emancipation? It is indeed no longer asked : which makes free-Judaism or Chris t ianity ? On t he con trary, it is now asked : which makes free-the negation of Judaism or the negation of Christianity ? "If they wish t o become free the Je w s should n o t embrace Chris tianity as such, but Christianity in dissolution, religion in dissolu tion; that is to say, the Enlightenment, criticism, and its outcome, a free humanity . 7 I t is still a matter, therefore, of the Jews professing s ome kind of faith; no longer Christianity as such, but Christianity in dissolu tion. Bauer asks the Jews to break with the essence of the Christian religion, but this demand does not follow, as he himself admits, from the development of the Jewish nature . . From the moment when B auer, at the end of his Judenfrage, saw in Judaism only a crude religious criticism of Christianity, and; therefore, attributed to it onl y a religious significance, i t was to b.e expected that he would transform the e m ancip a tion of the Jews into a philosoph ico-theological act. B auer regards the ideal and abstract essence of the Jew-his reli gio n-as the whole of his nature . He, therefore, concludes rightly that "The Jew contributes nothing to mankind when he disregards his own limited law, " when he renounces all his Judaism . S The relation between Jews a n d Christians thus becomes t h e fol lowing : the only interest which the emancipation of the Jew pre sents for the Christian is a general h uman and theoretical interest . Jewish and Christian religions, .
"
.
"
of the present-day Jews to become fr e e . [In Einundzwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz ( E d . G. Herwegh ) , pp. 5 6- 7 1 .-Marx]
5. The capacity and Christians
6. Loc. c i t . , p. 7 1 . [Marxl 7. Ibid . , p. 7 0 . [Marx] 8. Loc. cit., p. 6 5 . [Marx]
48
The Early Marx
Judaism is a phenomen o n which offends the religious eye of the Christian. As soon as the Christian's eye ceases to be religious the phenomenon ceases to offend it. The emancipation of the Jew is not in itself, therefore, a task which falls to the Christian to perform . The Jew, on the other hand, if he wants to emancipate h imself has to undertake, besides his own work, the work of the Christian-the "criticism of the gospels," of the "life of Jesus," etc.9 "It is for them to arrange matters; they will decide their own destiny. But history does not allow itself to be mocked."l We will attempt t o escape from t h e theological formulation o f the question. For us, the question concerning t h e capacity of thc Jew for emancipation is transformed into another question : what specific social element is it necessary to overcome in order to abol ish Judaism? For the capacity of the present-day Jew to emancipate himself expresses the relation of Judaism to the emancipation of the contemporary worl d . The relation results necessarily from the particular situation of Judaism in the present enslaved wo rld. Let us consider the real Jew : not the sabbath Jew, whom Ba uer considers, but the everyday Jew. Let us not seek the secret of the Jew in his religion, b ut let us seek the secret of the religion in the real Jew. What is the profane basis o f Judaism? Practical need, self interest. 'What i s the worldly cult of the Jew? Huckstering. What is h i s worldly god? Money. Very well : then in emancipating itself from huckstering and money, and thus from real and practical J udaism, our age would emancipate i tself. An organization of society which would abolish the pre conditions and thus the very possibility of huckstering, would make the Jew impossible . His religious consciousness would evaporate like some insipid vapou r in the real, life-giving air of soCiety. On the other hand, when the Jew recognizes his practical nature as invalid and endeavours to abolish it, he begins to deviate from his former path of development, works for general human emancipation and turns against the supreme practical expression of human self estrangemen t. We discern in Judaism, therefore, a universal antisocial element of the present time, whose historical development, zealously aided in its harmful aspects by the Jews, has now attained its culminating point, a point at which it must necessarily begin to disintegrate. 9 . Marx alludes h e r e to Bruno B a u e r , Kritik der e 'll a ngelischen Geschichte der Leipzig, I-II, Synoptiker, Vols. 1 8 4 1 ; Vol. III, Braunschweig, 1 8 4 2 , and David Friedrich Strauss, Das Leben Jesu, 2 vols. TUbingen, 1 8 3 5-6 .
An English translation of Strauss' book b y Marian E v a n s (George E l iot) was published i n 1 8 4 6 under the title Life
of Jesus Critically E"amined. I . Bauer,
"Die Fii.higkeit . . . etc. , " p .
7 1 . [Mar,,]
On the Jewish Question
49
In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emanci pation of mankind from Judaism. The Jew has already emancipated himself in a Jewish fashion. "The Jew, who is merely tolerated in Vienna for example, deter mines the fate of the whole Empire by his financial power. The Jew, who may be entirely without rights in the smallest German state, decides the destiny of Europe. While the corporations and guilds exclude the Jew, or at least look on h im with disfavour, the audacity of industry mocks the obstinacy of medieval institu tions ."2 This is not an isolated instance. The Jew has emancipated him self in a Jewish manner, not only by acquiring the power of money, but also because money has become, through h im and also apart from him, a world power, while the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian n a tions . The Jews have emancipated themselves in so far as the Christians have become Jews . Thus, for example, Captain Hamilton reports that the devout and politically free inhabitant of New England is a kind of Lao coon who makes not the least effort to escape from the serpents which are crushing h i m . Mammon is his idol which he adores not only with his lips but with the whole force of his body and mind. In his view the world is no more than a Stock Exchange, and he is convinced that he has no other destiny here below than to become richer than his neighbour. Trade has seized upon all his thoughts, and he has no other recreation than to exchange objects. When he travels he carries, so to speak, his goods and h is counter on his back and talks only of interest and profit . If he loses sight of his own business for an instant it is only in order to pry into the business of his competitors.3 In North America, indeed, the effective domination of the Chris tian world by J udaism has come to be manifested in a common and unambiguous form; the preaching of the Gospel itself, Christian preaching, has become an article of commerce, and the bankrupt trader in the church behaves like the prosperous clergyman in busi ness . "This man whom you see at the head of a respectable congre gation began as a trader; his business having failed he has become a minister. This other began as a priest, but as soon as he had accu mulated some money he abandoned the priesthood for trade. In the eyes of many people the religious ministry is a veritable indus trial career. "4 According to B auer, it is "a hypocritical situation when, in theory, the Jew is deprived of political rights, while in practice he wields tremendous power and exercises on a wholesale scale the 2. Bauer, Die Juden/rage, p. 14. [MaTx] 3. Hamil ton, op. cit . , I, p. 2 1 3 . [Marx]
Marx paraphrases this passage. 4. Beaumont, op. cit., II, p. [Marx]
1 79 .
50
The Early Marx
political influence which is denied him in minor matters ."5 The contradiction which exists between the effective political power of the Jew and his political rights, is the contradiction between politics and the power of money i n general . Politics is in principle superior to the power of money, but in practice it has become its bondsman . Judaism has maintained itself alongside Christianity, not only because it constituted the religious criticism of Christianity and embodied the doubt concerning the religious origins of Christian ity, but equally because the practical Jewish spirit-J udaism or commerce6-has perpetuated itself in Christian society and has even attained its highest development there. The Jew, who occu pies a distinctive place in civil society, only manifests in a distinc tive way the J udaism of civil society. Judaism has been preserved, not in spite of history, but by his tory. It is from its own entrails that civil society ceaselessly engend ers the Jew. \Vhat was, in itself, the basis of the Jewish religion? Practical need, egoism . The monotheism of the Jews is, therefore, in reality, a polytheism of the numerous needs of man, a polytheism which makes even the lavatory an object of divine regulation. Practical need, egoism, is the principle of civil society, and is revealed as such in its p ure form as soon as civil society has fully engendered the political state. The god of practical need and self-interest is money. Money is the jealous god of Israel, beside which no other god may exist . Money abases all the gods of plankind and changes them into commodities. Money is the universal and self-sufficient value of all things . It has, therefore, deprived the whole world, both the human world and nature, of their own proper value . Money is the alien'a ted essence of man's work and existence; this essence domi nates him and he worships it. The god of the Jews has been secularized and has become the god of this world. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange. The mode of perceiving nature, under the rule of private prop erty and money, is a real contempt for, and a practical degradation of. nature, which does indeed exist in the Jewish religion but only as a creature of the imagination . I t is in this sense that Thomas Munzer declares it intolerable "that every creature should be transformed into property-the fishes in the water, the birds of the air, the plants of the earth : the 5, Bauer, Die luden/rage, p. 14. [Marx] 6. The German word ludentum had, in the language of the time, the secondary
meaning of "commerce," and i n this and other passages Marx exploits the two senses o f the word.
On the Jewish Question
51
creature too should become free ."7 That which is contained in an abstract form i n the Jewish reli gion-contempt for theory, for art, for history, and for man as an end in himself-is the real, conscious standpoint and the virtue of the man of money. Even the species-relation itself, the relation between man and woman, becomes an object of commerce. Woman i s bartered away. The chimerical natio � ality of the Jew is the nationality of the trader, and above all of the financier. The law, without basis or reason, of the Jew, is only the religious caricature of morality and right in general, without basis or reason; the purely formal rites with which the world of self-interest encir cles itself. Here again the supreme condition of man is his legal s tatus, his relationship to laws which are valid for him, not because they are the laws of his own will and nature, but because they are dominant and any infraction of them will be avenged. Jewish Jesuitism, the same practical Jesuitism which Bauer dis covers in the Talmud, is the relationship of the world of self interest to the laws which govern this world, laws which the world devotes its principal arts to circumventing. Indeed, the operation of this world within its framework of laws is impossible without the continual supersession of law. Judaism could not develop further as a religion, in a theoretical form, because the world view of practical need is, by its very nature, circumscribed, and the delineation of its characteristics soon completed. The religion of practical need could not, by its very nature, find its consummation in theory, but only in practice, just because prac tice is its truth . J udaism could not create a new world . It could only bring the new creations and conditions af the world within its own sphere of activity, because practical need, the spirit of which is self-interest, is always passive, cannot expand at will, but finds itself extended as a result of the continued development of society. J udaism attains its apogee with the perfection of civil society; but civil society only reaches perfection in the Christian world. Only under the sway of Christianity, which objectifies all national, natu ral, moral and theoretical relationships, could civil society separate itself completely from the life of the state, sever all the species bonds of man, establish egoism and selfish need in their place, and dissolve the human world into a world of atomistic, antagonistic individuals. 7 . Quoted from Thomas MUnzer's pam phlet against Luther, "Hochverrusachte Schutzrede und Antwort wider das geistlose, sanftlebende Fleisch zu Wit tenberg, welches mit verkehrter Weise
d urch den Diebstahl der heiligen Schrift die erbarmliche Christenheit also ganz jammerlich besudelt hat." (p. R iii. 1 5 2 4 . ) [Marx]
52
The Early Marx
Christianity issued from Judais m It has now been re-absorbed into Judaism. From the beginning, the Christian was t h e theorizing Jew; conse quently, the Jew is the practical Christian . And the practical Chris tian has become a Jew again I t was only in appearance t h a t Christianity overcame real Judaism . It was too refined, too spiritual to eliminate the crudeness of pract i cal need except by r aising it into the ethereal real m Christianity is the sublime thought o f Judaism; J uda i sm is the vulgar pract i cal ap p licat i on of C hr i stianity But this practical app l i cation could only become universal w hen Ch r istianity a s perfected religion had accom p l i shed in a theoretical fash i on, the alienation of man from himself and from nature . It was only then that Judaism could attain universal domination and could turn alienated man and alienated nature into alienable, saleable objects, in thrall to egoistic need and huckstering. Objectification is the practice of alienation. Just as man, so lon g as he is engrossed in religion, can only objectify his essence by an alien and fantastic being; so u nder the sway of egoistic need, he can only affirm himself and produce ob j ects in p r actice by s ubordinat ing his products and his own activity to the domination of an alien entity, and by attributing to them the signi fi c a nce of an alien entity, namely money. In its perfe c ted practice the spi r itual egoism of Christianity nee essarily becomes the material egoism of the Jew, celestial need is transmuted into terrestrial n eed, subjectivism into self-interest. The tenacity of the Jew is to be explained, not by his reli g ion but rather by the human basis of his religion p ractica l need and egoism It is because the essence of the Jew was universally realized and seculari zed in civil society, that civil society could not convince the Jew of the unreality of his religious essence, which is p r ecis e ly the ideal representation of practical need. It is not only, the rd ore, in the Pentateuch and the Talmud, but also in contemporary society, that we find the essence of t h e present-day Jew; not as an abstra c t essence, but as one which is supremely empirical, not only as a lim itation of the J ew, but as the Jewish narrowness of society . As soon as society succeeds in abolishing the empirical essence o f Judaism-huckster i n g and i t s conditions-the J e w becomes impos sible, beca u se his consciousness no longer has an ob j ect The sub jective basis of Judaism-practical need-assumes a human form, and the conflict between the inaividual, sensuous existence of man and his spec i es e x istence is abolished The social e mancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Tudaism. .
.
.
.
,
.
,
-
.
.
-
,
.
Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction KARL MARX
\Vritten at the close of 1 84 3 and published in the Deutsch-Fran%osische
J ahrbiicher
in 1 844, this essay is a consummate expression of the radical
mind. It proclaims the need for a "radical revolution" as the way to man's self-realization. Germany is taken as the focal point of this revolution, and the proletariat-the concept of which makes its first appearance i n Marx's writings here-as its class vehicle. In August 1844 Marx sent a copy of the essay to Ludwig Feuerbach along with a long letter expressing love and respect for that thinker, whose writing had provided, he wrote, a "philo sophical foundation for socialism" by bringing the idea of the human species from " the heaven of abstraction to the real earth." Feuerbach's in
fluence, along with that of Hegel, is clearly visible in the essay_
For Germany, the cntlclsm of religion has been largely com pleted; and the criticism of religion is the premise of all criticis m . The profane existence of error i s compromised once its celestial oratio pro aris et focis has been refuted. Man, who has found in the fantastic reality of heaven, where he sought a supernatural being, only his own reflection, will no longer be tempted to find only the semblance of himself-a non-human being-where he seeks and must seek his true reality. The basis of irreligious criticism is this : man makes religion; religion does not make man . Religion is indeed man's self consciousness and self-awareness so long as he has not found him self or has lost himself again . But man is not an abstract being, squatting outside the world. Man is the human world, the state, society. This state, this society, produce religion which is an inverted world consciousness, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic com pendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its 53
54
The Early Marx
enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, its general basis of consolation and justification . It is the fantastic realiz.ation of the human being inasmuch as the human being possesses no true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly a str:lggle against that world wh ose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion i s the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless condition s. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness . The call to abandon their illusions!, about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which 1 requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, the � embryonic criticism of this vale of tears of which religion is the I halo. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain, not in order that man shall bear the chain without caprice or consola tion but so that he shall cast off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man so that he will think, act and fashion his reality as a man who has lost his illusions and regained his reason ; so that he will revolve about himself as his own true sun . Religion is only the illusory sun about which man revolves so long as he does not revolve about himself. ' I t is the task of history, therefore, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. The immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, is to unmask human self-alienation in its secular form now that it has been unmasked in its sacred form. Thus the criticism of heaven is trans , formed into the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics. The following exposition1-which is a contribution to this undertaking-does not deal directly with the original but with a copy, the German philosophy of the state and of right, for the simple reason that i t deals with Germany. If one were to begin with the status quo itself in Germany, even in the most appropriate way, i .e . negatively, the result would still be an anachronism. Even the negation of our political present is already a dusty fact in the historical lumber room of modern nations . I may negate powdered wigs, but I am still left with unpowdered wigs. If I negate the German situation of 1 843 I have,
'c
1 . Marx r e f e r s t o his i n t e n t i o n to puhlish a c r i t i c a l study of Hegel's Phi losophy of Right, to which this essay was an introduction, One of Marx's preliminary manuscripts for such a
study has been published entitled "Aus der Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilo sophie. Kritik des Hegelschen Staats rechts" (MEGA I, I I , pp. 403-5 5 3 ) .
Contribution t o the Critique: Introduction
55
a ccording to French chronology, hardly reached the year 1 7 89, and s till less the vital centre of the present day. German history, indeed, prides itself upon a development which no other nation had previously accomplished, or will ever imitate in the historical sphere . We have shared in the restorations of modern n ations without ever sharing in their revolutions . We have been restored, first because other nations have dared to make revolutions, a nd secondly because other nations have suffered counter r evolutions; in the first case because our masters were afraid, and in the second case because they were not afraid. Led by our shep herds, we have only once kept company with liberty and that was on the day of its internment. A school of thought, which justifies the infamy of today by that of yesterday, which regards every cry from the serf under the knout as a cry of rebellion once the knout has become time-honoured, ancestral and historical, a school for which history shows only its a posteriori as the God of Israel did for his servant Moses-the Historical school of law2-might be supposed to have invented German history, if it were not in fact itself an invention of German history, A Shylock, but a servile Shylock, it swears upon its bond, its historical, Christian-Germanic bond, for every pound of flesh cut from the heart of the people . On the other hand, good-natured enthusiasts, German chauvin ists by temperament and enlightened liberals by reflection, seek our history of liberty beyond our history, in the primeval Teutonic forests. But how does the history of our liberty differ from the his tory of the wild boar's liberty, if it is only to be found in the forests? And as the proverb has i t : what is shouted into the forest, the forest echoes back . So peace upon the primeval Teutonic forests ! But war upon the state of affairs in Germany! By all means ! This state of affairs is beneath the level of history, beneath all criticism; nevertheless it remains an object of criticism just as the criminal who is beneath h umanity remains an object of the executioner. In its struggle against this state of affairs criticism is not a passion 01 the head, but the head of passion. It is not a lancet but a weapori . Its object is an enemy which it aims not to refute but to destroy . For the spirit of this state of affairs has already been refuted. It is not, in itself, an object worthy of our thought; it is an existence as 2. The principal representative of the Historical school was F. K . von Sa vigny ( 1 7 7 9 -1 8 6 1 ) who outlined its programme in his b o o k Yom BeTuf un
serer Zeit fur Gesetzgebung und Rechts wissenschaft ( O n the V o c a t i o n o f our
A g e for Legislation and Jurisprudence) . Heidelberg, 1 8 1 4 . Marx attended Sa vigny's lectures a t the U n i versity of
B e r l i n in 1 8 3 6 - 7 ; b u t h e was more at tracted b y the lectures o f E d u ard G a n s ( 1 7 9 8- 1 8 3 9 ) , a l i b e r a l H e g e l i a n i n fluenced by Saint-Si m o n , w h o empha sized in his teaching and writings the p a r t played by reason i n the develop ment o f law, and who was Savigny's principal opponent i n Berlin.
56
The Early f..tlarx
contemptible as it is despised . Criticism itself has no need of any further elucidation of this object, for it has already understood it. Criticism is no longer an end in itself, but simply a means; indigna tion is its essential mode of feeling, and den'unciation its principal task. It is a matter of depicting the stifling pressure which th e differ ent social spheres exert upon other, the universal but passive ill-humour, the complacent but self-deluding narrowness of spirit; all this incorporated in a system of government which lives by con serving this paltriness, and is itself paltriness in government. \Vhat a spectacle ! Society is infinitely divided into the most diverse races, which confront each other with their petty antipa thies, bad conscience and coarse mediocrity; and which, precisely because of their ambiguous and mistrustful situation, are treated without exception, though in different ways, as merely tolerated existences by their masters . And they are forced to recognize and acknowledge this fact of being dominated, governed and possessed, as a concession from heaven! On the other side are the rulers them selves, whose greatness is in inverse proportion to their number. The criticism which deals with this subject-matter is criticism in a hand-to-hand fight; and in such a fight it is of no interest to know whether the adversary is of the same rank, is noble or interest ing-all that matters is to strike him . It is a question of denying the Germans an instant of illusion or resignation . The burden must be made still more irksome by awakening a consciousness of it, and shame must be made more shameful still by rendering it public . Every sphere of German society must be depicted as the partie honteuse of German society; and these petrified social conditions must be made to dance by singing their own melody to the m . The nation must be taught to be terrified of itself, in order to give it courage. In this way an imperious need of the German nation will be satisfied, and the needs o f nations are themselves the final causes of their satisfaction . Even for the modern nations this struggle against the limited character of the German status quo does not lack interest; for the German status quo is the open consummation of the ancien regime, and the ancien regime is the hidden defect of the modern state. The struggle against the political present of the Germans is a struggle against the p ast of the modern nations, who are still con tinually importuned by the reminiscences of this past. It i s instruc tive for the modern nations to see the ancien regime, which has played a tragic part in their h istory, play a comic part a s a German ghost. The ancien regime had a tragic history, so long as it was the established power in the world while liberty was a personal fancy; in short, so long as it believed and had to believe in its own valid-
Contribution to the Gritique: Introduction
57
i ty. So long as the ancien regime, as an existing world order, strug gled against a new world which was j ust coming into existence, there was on its side a historical error but no personal error. Its decline was, therefore, tragic. The p resent German regime, on the other hand, which is an anachronism, a flagrant contradiction of universally accepted axioms-the nullity of the ancien regime revealed to the whole world-only imagines that it believes in itself and asks the world to share its illusion. I f it believed in its own nature would it attempt to hide it beneath the semblance of an alien nature and look for its salvation in hypocrisy and sophistry? The modern ancien regime is the comedian of a world order whose real heroes are dea d . History is thorough, and it goes through many stages when it conducts an ancient formation to its grave. The last stage of a world-historical formation is comedy. The Greek gods, already once mortally wounded in Aeschylus' tragedy Prometheus Bound, had to endure a second death, a comic death, in Lucian's dialogues. \Vhy should history proceed in this way? So that mankind shall separate itself gladly from its past. \Ve claim this joyful historical destiny for the political powers of Germany. But as soon as criticism concerns itself with modern social and political reality, and thus arrives at genuine human problems, it must either go outside the German status quo or approach its object indirectly. For example, the relation of industry, of the world of wealth in general, to the political world is a major prob lem of modern times . In what form does this problem begin to preoccupy the Germans? In the form of protective tariffs, the system of prohibition, the national economy. German chauvinism has passed from men to matter, so that one fine day our knights of cotton and heroes o f iron found themselves metamorphosed into patriots. The sovereignty of monopoly within the country has begun to be recognized since sovereignty vis-a-vis foreign countries was attributed to it. In Germany, therefore, a beginning is mad� with what came as the conclusion ·in France and England. The old , rotten order against which these nations revolt in their theories, and which they bear only as chains are borne, is hailed in Germany as the dawn of a glorious future which as yet hardly dares to move from a cunning3 theory to a ruthless practice. \Vhile in France and England the problem is put in the form : political economy or the rule of society over wealth; in Germany it is put in the form : national economy or the rule of private property over nationality. Thus, in England and France it is a question of abolishing monop3 . In German, listigen ; Marx is pun ning upon the name o f Friedrich List ( 1 7 8 9- 1 8 4 6 ) , the apostle of industrial capitalism in a nationalist and protec-
tionist form , who published in 1 84 0 his influential book, Das nat ionale System de,. politischen lJkonomie.
58
The Early Marx
oly, which has developed to its final consequences; while in Ger many it is a question of proceeding to the final consequences of mon opoly. There it is a question of the s olution; here, only a ques tion of the collision . We can see very well from this example how modem problems are presented in Germany; the example shows that our history, like a raw recruit, has so far only had to do extra drill on old and hackneyed historical matters . If the whole of German development were at the level of German political development, a German could have no greater part in con temporary p roblems than can a Russian. If the individual is not re stricted by the limitations of h is country, still less is the nation liber ated by the liberation of one indivdual. The fact that a Scythian was one of the Greek philosophers4 did not enable the Scythians to advance a single step towards Greek culture. Fortunately, we Germans are not Scythians . Just as the nations of the ancient world lived their pre-history in the imagination, in mythology, so we Germans have lived our post-history in thought, in philosophy. We are the philosophical contemporaries of the present day without being its historical con temporaries. German philosophy is the ideal prolongation of German history. '''hen, therefore, we criticize, instead of the oeuvres incompletes of our real history, the oeuvres posthumes of our ideal history phil o so phy, our criticism stands at the centre of the problems of which t h e present age says : that is the question. That which constitutes, for the advanced nations, a practical break VII ith modern political conditions, is in Germany where these condi tions do not yet exist, virtually a critical break with their philosoph ical reflection . The German philosophy of right and of the state is the only German his tory which is al pari with the official modern times . The German nation is obliged, therefore, to connect its dream history with its present conditions, and to subject to criticism not only these existing conditions but also their abstract continuation . Its future cannot be restricted either to the direct negation of its real j u ri dical and political circumstances, or to the direct realization of i t s ideal juridical a n d political circumstances . T h e direct negation of its real circumstances already exists in its ideal circumstances, while it has almost outlived t h e realization of its ideal circum stances in the contemplation of neighbouring nations. It is with good reason, therefore, that the practical political party in Germany demands the negation of p hilosophy. Its error does not consist in formulating this demand, but in limiting itself to a demand which it does not, and cannot, make effective. It supposes that it can achieve this negation by turning its back on philosophy, looking -
4 . Anacharsis.
Contribution to the Critique: Introduction
59
elsewhere, and murmuring a few trite and ill-humoured phrases. Because of its narrow outlook it does not take account of philoso p hy as part of German reality, and even regards philosophy as beneath the level of German practical life and its theories . You demand as a p oint of departure real germs of life, but you forget that the real germ of life of the German nation has so far sprouted only in its cranium . In short, you cannot abolish philosophy with out realizing it. The same error was committed, but in the opposite direction, by the theoretical party which originated in philosophy. . In the present struggle, this party saw only the critical struggle of philosophy against the German world. It did not consider that pre vious philosophy itself belongs to this world and is its complement, eve n if only an ideal complement. Critical as regards its counter part, it was not self-critical. It took as its p oint of departure the p resuppositions of philosophy; and either accepted the conclusions which philosophy had reached or else presented as direct philosoph ical demands and conclusions, demands and concl usions drawn from elsewhere . But these latter-assuming their legitimacy-can only be achieved by the negation of previous philosophy, that is, philosophy as philosophy. \Ve shall provide later a more compre hensive account of this party. I ts principal defect may be s umma rized as follows : it believed that it could realize philosophy without abolishing it. The criticism of the German philosophy of right and of the state which was given its most logical, profound and complete expression by Hegel, is at once the critical analysis of the modern state and of the reality connected with it, and the definitive negation of all the past forms of consciousness in German ;urisprudence and politics, whose most distinguished and most general expression, raised to the level of a science, is precisely the speculative philosophy of right. If it was only Germany which could produce the speculative philoso phy of right-this extravagant and abstract thought about the · modern state, the reality of which remains in the beyond ( even if this beyond is only across the Rhine ) -the ·German representative of the modern state, on the contrary, which leaves out of account the real man was itself only possi ble because, and to the extent that, the modern state itself l eaves the real man out of account or only satisfies the whole man in an illusory way . In politics, the Ger mans have thought what other nations have done . GermanY has been their theoretical consciousness. The abstraction and pre ; ump hon of its philosophy was in step with the partial and stunted char acter of their reality. I f, therefore, the status quo of the German political system expresses the consummation of the ancien regime, the thorn in the flesh of the modern state, the status quo of
60
The Early Marx
German political science expresses the imperfection of the modern state itself, the degeneracy of its fles h . As t h e determined adversary o f the previous form of German political consciousness, the criticism of the speculative philosophy of right does not remain within its own sphere, but leads on to tasks which can only be solved by means of practical activity. The question then arises : can Germany attain a practical activity d la hauteur des principes; that i s to say, a revolution which will raise it not only to the official level of the modern nations, but to the human level which will be the immediate future of those nations . I t i s clear that the arm o f criticism cannot replace the criticism (,"' of arms . Material force can only be overthrown by material force; theory itself becomes a material force when it has seized the \I but masses . Theory is capable of seizing the masses when it demonad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as \ strates it becomes radical . To be radical is to grasp things by the root. B ut for man the root is man himself. 'Vhat proves beyond doubt the radicalism of German theory, and thus its practical energy, is that i t begins from the resolute positive abolition of religion. The criti cism of religion ends with the doctrine that man is the supreme being for man . It ends, therefore, with the categorical imperative to overthrow all those conditions i n which man is an abased, enslaved, abandoned, contemptible being-conditions which can hardly be better described than in the exclamation of a Frenchman on the occasion of a p roposed tax upon dogs : "'Vretched dogs ! They want to treat you like men ! " Even from the historical standpoint theoretical emancipation has a specific practical importance for Germany. In fact Germany's revolutionary past is theoretical-it is the Reformation . In that period the revolution originated in the brain of a monk, today in the brain of the philosopher. Luther, without question, overcame servitude through devotion but only by substituting servitude through conviction. He shattered the faith in authority by restoring the authority of faith . He trans formed the priests into laymen by turning laymen into priests . He liberated man from external religiosity by making religiosity the innermost essen ce of man. He liberated the body from its chains because he fettered the heart with chain s . B u t i f Protestantism was n o t the solution i t d i d a t least pose the problem correctly. It was no longer a question, thereafter, of the layman's struggle against the priest outside himself, but of his struggle against his own internal priest, against his own priestly nature. An d if the Protestant metamorphosis of German laymen into priests emancipated the Tay p opes-the princes together with
\
Contribution to the Critique: Introduction
61
their clergy, the privileged and the philistines-the philosophical metamorphosis of the priestly Germans into men will emancipate the people.
But just as emancipation will not be confined to
princes, so the secularization of property will not be limited to the confoscation of church property, which was practised especially by hypocritical Prussia. At that time, the Peasant War, the most radi cal event in German history, came to grief because of theology. Today, when theology itself has come to grief, the most unfree phenomenon in German history-our status q uo
will be shattered
-
by philosophy. On the eve of the Reformation official Germany was the most abject servant of Rome. On the eve of its revolution Germany is the abject servant of those who are far inferior to Rome; of Prussia and Austria, of petty squires and philistines. But a radical revolution in Germany seems to encounter a major difficulty. Revolutions need a passive element, a material basis. Theory is only realized in a people so far as it fulfils the needs of the people. \Vill there correspond to the monstrous discrepancy between the demands of German thought and the answers of German reality a similar discrepancy between civil society and the state, and within civil society itself? \Vill theoretical needs be directly practical needs? It is not enough that thought should seek to realize itself; reality must also strive towards thought. But Germany has not passed through the intermediate stage of political emancipation at the same time as the modern nations. It has not yet attflined in practice those stages which it has tran scended in theory. How could Germany, in salta mortale, surmount not only its own barriers but also those of the modern nations, that is, those barriers which it must in reality experience and strive for as an emancipation from its own real barriers? A radical revolution can only be a revolution of radical needs, for which the conditions and breeding ground appear to be lacking. But if Germany accompanied the development of the modern nations only through the abstract activity of thought, without _
taking an active part in the real struggles of this development, it_ has also experienced the pains of this development without sharing in its pleasures and partial satisfactions. The abstract activity on one side has its counterpart in the abstract suffering on the other. And one fine day Germany will find itself at the level of the Euro pean decadence, before ever having attained the level of European emancipation. It will be comparable to
a
fetishist who is sickening
from the diseases of Christianity. If the German governments are examined it will be found that the circumstances of the time, the situation of Germany, the out look of German culture, and lastly their own fortunate instinct, all
\
\
62
The Early Marx
drive them to combine the civilized deficiencies of the modern political world (whose advantages we do not enjoy) with the barba rous deficiencies of the ancien regime (which we enjoy in full meas ure); so that Germany must participate more and more, if not in the reason at least in the unreason of those political systems which transcend its
status quo. Is there, for example, any country in the
whole world which shares with such naIvete as so-called constitu tional Germany all the illusions of the constitutional regime with out sharing its realities? And was it not, of necessity, a German government which had the idea of combining the torments of cen sorship with the torments of the French September laws5 which presuppose the liberty of the Press? Just as the gods of all the nations were to be found in the Roman Pantheon, so there will be found in the Holy Roman German Empire an the
sins of all the
forms of State. That this eclecticism will attain an unprecedented degree is assured in particular by the
politico-aesthetic gourmandise
of a German king who proposes to play all the roles of royalty feudal or bureaucratic, absolute or constitutional, autocratic or democratic-if not in the person of the people at least in his
own himself. Germany, as the deficiency of present-day politics constituted into a system, will
person, and if not for the people, at least for
not be able to demolish the specific German barriers without demolishing the general barriers of present-day politics. It
is
not
radical revolution, universal human emancipation, merely
which is a Utopian dream for Germany, but rather a partial,
political revolution which leaves the pillars of the building stand ing. What is the basis of a partial, merely political revolution? Simply this: a
section of civil society emancipates itself and attains par ticular situation, a general emancipation of society. This class eman
universal domination; a determinate class undertakes, from its
cipates society as a whole, but only on condition that the whole of society is in the same situation as this class; for example, that it possesses or can easily acquire money or culture. No class in civil society can ,play this part unless it can arouse, in itself and in the masses, a moment of enthusiasm in which it associates and mingles with society at large, identifies itself with it, and is felt and recognized as the
general representative of this
society. Its aims and interests must genuinely be the aims and interests of society itself, of which it becomes in reality the social head and heart. It is only in the name of general interests that a particular class can claim general supremacy. In order to attain this liberating position, and the political direction of all spheres of society, revolutionary energy and consciousness of its own power do 5, The laws of September , 1835, which increased the financial guarantees required from the publishers of news-
papers and introduced heavier penalties for "subversive" publications.
Contribution to the Critique: Introduction
63
not suffice. For a
popular revolution and the emancipation of a par ticular class of civil society to coincide, for one class to represent
the whole of society, another class must concentrate in itself all the evils of society, a particular class must embody and represent a gen eral obstacle and limitation. A particular social sphere must be regarded as the
notorious crime of the whole society, so that eman
cipation from this sphere appears as
a
general emancipation. For
one class to be the liberating class par excellence, it is necessary that another class should be openly the oppressing class. The nega tive significance of the French nobility and clergy produced the positive significance of the bourgeoisie, th� class which stood next to them and opposed them. But in Germany every class lacks the logic, insight, courage and clarity which would make it
a
negative representative of society.
Moreover, there is also lacking in every class the generosity of spirit which identifies itself, if only for a moment, with the popular mind; that genius which pushes material force to political power, that revolutionary daring which throws at its adversary the defiant phrase:
J am nothing and I should be everything. The essence of
German morality and honour, in classes as in individuals, is a
modest egoism which displays, and allows others to display, its own narrowness. The relation between the different spheres of German society is, therefore, not dramatic, but epic. Each of these spheres begins to be aware of itself and to establish itself beside the others, not from the moment when it is oppressed, but from the moment that circumstances, without any action of its own, have created a new sphere which it can in turn oppress. Even the
moral sentiment of the German middle class has no other basis than the conscious ness of being the representative of the narrow and limited medi ocrity of all the other classes. It is not only the German kings, therefore, who ascend their thrones
mal a propos. Each sphere of
civil society suffers a defeat before gaining the victory; it erects its own barrier before having destroyed the barrier which opposes it; it displays the narrowness of its views before having displayed their generosity, and thus every opportunity of playing an important role has passed before it properly existed, and each class, at the very moment when it begins its struggle against the class above it, remains involved in a struggle against the class beneath. For this reason, the princes are in conflict with the monarch, the bureauc racy with the nobility, the bourgeoisie with all of them, while the proletariat is already beginning its struggle with the bourgeoisie. The middle class hardly dares to conceive the idea of emancipation from its own point of view before· the development of social condi tions, and the progress of political theory, show that this p oint of view is already antiquated, or at least disputable.
64
The Early Marx
In France it is enough to be something in order to desire to
be
everything. In Germany no one has the right to be anything with out first renouncing everything. In France partial emancipation is a basis for complete emancipation. In Germany complete emancipa tion is a
conditio sine qua non for any partial emancipation. In
France it is the reality, in Germany the impossibility, of a progres sive emancipation which must give birth to complete liberty. In France every class of the population is
politically idealistic and con
siders itself first of all, not as a particular class, but as the represent ative of the general needs of society. The role of liberator can, therefore, pass successively in a dramatic movement to different classes in the population, until it finally reaches the class which achieves social
freedom; no longer assuming certain conditions
external to man, which are none the less created by human society, but organizing all the conditions of human life on the basis of social freedom. In Germany, on the contrary, where practical life is as little intellectual as intellectual life is p ractical, no class of civil society feels the need for, or the ability to achieve, a general eman cipation, until it is forced to it by its immediate situation, by mate rial necessity and by its fetters themselves. Where is there, then, a real possibility of emancipation in Ger many?
This is our reply. A class must be formed which has radical chains, a class in civil society which is not a class of civil society, a class which is the dissolution of all classes, a sphere of society which has a universal character because its sufferings are universal, and which does not claim a
particular redress because the wrong particular wrong but wrong in general. There must be formed a sphere of society which claims no tradi tional status but only a human status, a sphere which is not
which is done to it is not a
opposed. to particular consequences but is totally opposed to the assumptions of the German political system; a sphere, finally, which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all the other spheres of society, without, therefore, emancipating all these other spheres, which is, in short, a
total loss of humanity and which total redemption of humanity. This dis solution of society, as a particular class, is the proletariat.
can only redeem itself by a
The proletariat is only beginning to form itself in Germany, as a result of the industrial movement. For what constitutes the prole tariat is not naturally existing poverty, but poverty artificially pro duced, is not the mass of people mechanically oppressed by the weight of society, but the mass resulting from the disintegration of society and above all from the disintegration of the middle class. Needless to say, however, the numbers of the proletariat are also
Contribution to the Critique: Introduction
65
increased by the victims of natural poverty and of Christian Germanic serfdom. When the proletariat announces the dissolution of the existing social order, it only declares the secret of its own existence, for it is the effective dissolution of this order. When the proletariat . demands the negation of private property it only lays down as a principle for society what society has already made a principle for the proletariat, and what the latter already involuntarily embodies as the negative result of society. Thus the proletarian has the same right, in relation to the new world which is coming into being, as the GeTman king has in relation to the existing world when he calls the people his people or a horse his horse. In calling the people his private property the king simply declares that the owner of private property is king. Just as philosophy finds its material weapons in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its intellectual weapons in philosophy. And once the lightning of thought has penetrated deeply into this virgin soil of the people, the Germans will emancipate themselves and become men. Let us sum up these results. The emancipation of Germany is only possible in practice if one adopts the point of view of that theory according to which man is the highest being for man. Germany will not be able to emancipate itself from the Middle Ages unless it emancipates itself at the same time from the partial victories over the Middle Ages. In Germany no type of enslavement can be abolished unless all enslavement is destroyed. Germany, which likes to get to the bottom of things, can only make a revolu tion which upsets the whole order of things. The emancipation of Germany will be an emancipation of man. Philosophy is the head of this emancipation and the proletariat is its heart. Philosophy can only be realized by the abolition 6 of the proletariat, and the proletariat can only be abolished by t he realization of philosophy. . When all the inner conditions ripen, the day of German resurrec tion will be proclaimed by the crowing of the Gallic cock.7 6. Aufhebung [R. T.] 7. I.e., the future German revolution wIll be sparked by revolutionary de velopments in France. (This last para-
graph does not appear in the original Bottomore translation used . here;) [R. T.)
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 KARL MARX Soon after moving to Paris in November, 1843, Marx applied himself to the criticism of political economy-the new phase of his critical program foreshadowed in his two essays in the Deutsch-Franzosische
Tahrbiicher.
Be
tween April and August of 1844 he produced the rough draft of what, judging by his preface, Was to have been a book. He did not finish it for publication, however, and it lay unpublished for more than eighty years. The surviving parts, comprising four manuscripts, were given the name shown above. An incomplete version in Russian translation was published in Moscow in 1927. The first full edition in German, prepared by D. Ria zanov of the Marx·Engels Institute in Moscow, was published in Berlin in 1932, in Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe. The fundamentals of the Marxist interpretation of history are to be found in the 1844 manuscripts, including the notion of the proletarian revo lution and future communism as the goal of the historical process. The theory is set forth, however, in terms of philosophical concepts drawn by Marx from Hegel and Feuerbach, most notably the concept of man's "self-alienation" or "seJf-estrangement." History, particularly under modern capitalism, is seen as a story of man's alienation in his life as producer, and communism is presented as the final transcendence of alienation via a revo lution against private property. Because the 1844 manuscripts show us Marxism at the moment of its genesis in Marx's mind and because they help to clarify both the relation of Marxism to earlier German philosophy and its ethical significance, their publication has profoundly affected schol arship on Marx and Marxism in our time.
A part of the manuscripts consists largely of excerpts from writings of the political economists on such topics as wages of labor, profit of capital, and rent of land. The material reprinted here, comprising the extant portions in which Marx expounds his own position, consists of the preface and the sec tions entitled "Estranged Labour," "Private Property and Communism," "The Meaning of Human Requirements," "The Power of Money in Bour geois Society," and "Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole."
A number of passages in the manuscripts have been crossed out, appar ently by Marx. There is no reason to think that the passages crossed out had ceased to represent what Marx thought. He may well have bee"n guided by editorial considerations in working over the draft of a manuscript origi nally intended for publication. *' The translation and notes are by Martin Milligan.
Engels: 1843-44) tLondon: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975), pp. 249-346. I am
.. The cross-outs are indicated by pointed brackets in the complete text of the 1844 manuscripts as published in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3 (Marx and
indebted to Thomas Ferguson for bring ing the crossed-out material to my at tention.
66
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
67
Preface I have already given notice in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahr bucher of the critique of jurisprudence and political science in the form of a critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Righ t. In the
course of elaboration for publication, the intermingling of criticism directed only against speculation with criticism of the various sub jects themselves proved utterly unsuitable, hampering the develop ment of the argument and rendering comprehension difficult. Moreover the wealth and diversity of the subjects to be treated, could have been compressed into one work only in a purely aphoris tic style; whilst an aphoristic presentation of this kind, for its part, would have given the impression of arbitrary systematizing. I shall therefore issue the critique of law, ethics, politics, etc., in a series of distinct, independent pamphlets, and at the end try in a special work to present them again as a connected whole showing the interrelationship of the separate parts, and finally, shall make a cri tique of the speculative elaboration of that material. For this reason it will be found that the interconnection between political econ omy and the state, law, ethics, civil life, etc., is touched on in the present work only to the extent to which political economy itself ex professo1 touches on these subjects. It is hardly necessary to assure the reader conversant with politi cal economy that my results have been won by means of a wholly empirical analysis based on a conscientious critical study of political economy. [\Vhereas the uninformed reviewer who "tries to hide his com plete ignorance' and intellectual poverty by hurling the "utopian phrase" at the positive critic's head, or again such phrases as "pure, resolute, utterly critical criticism," the "not merely legal but social-utterly social-society," the "compact, massy mass," the "oratorical orators of the massy mass,"2 this reviewer has yet to fur" nish the first proof that besides his theological family-affairs he has anything to contribute to a discussion of worldly matters.J8 It goes without saying that besides the French and English Social ists I have made use of German socialist works as well. The only original German works of substance in this science, however-other 1. Particularly. 2. Marx refers here to the Young Hege lian Bruno Bauer, who had published in A llgemeine Literatur-Zeitung two long reviews dealing with books, arti cles and pamphlets on the Jewish ques tion. Most of the quoted phrases are taken from these reviews in Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, vol. 1, December, 1843; vol. 4, March, 1844. The expres sions "utopian phrase" and "compact
mass" can be found in Bauer's article "Was ist jetzt der Gegenstand del' Kri tik?" published in Allgemeine Litera tur-Zeitung, vol. 8, July, 1844.
Allgemeine Literatuf-Zeitung (Gen eral Literary Gazette ) , a German
monthly, was published by Bauer in Charlottenburg from December, 1843, to October, 1844. 3. Passages enclosed in brackets were crossed out by Marx in his manuscript.
68
The Early Marx
than \Veitling's writings-are the essays by Hess published in
Einundzwanzig Bogen,4 and Engels' Umrisse ZlL einer Kritik der NationalOkonomie5 in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher where,
likewise, I indicated in a very general way the basic elements of this work. [Besides being indebted to these authors who have given critical attention to political economy, positive criticism as a whole-and therefore also German positive criticism of political economy owes its true foundation to the discoveries of Feuerbach, against whose Philosophie der Zukunft6 and Thesen zur Reform der Philosophie7 in the Anecdotis,8 despite the tacit use that is made of them, the petty envy of some and the veritable wrath of others seem to have instigated a regular conspiracy of silence.] It is only with Feuerbach that positive, humanistic and naturalis tic criticism begins. The less noise they make, the more certain, profound, widespread and enduring is the effect of Feuerbach's writings, the only writings since Hegel's Phiinomenologie and Logik to contain a real theoretical revolution. In contrast to the critical theologians9 of our day, I have deemed the concluding chapter of the present work-the settling of accounts with Hegelian dialectic and Hegelian philosophy as a whole-to be absolutely necessary, a task not yet performed. This lack of thoroughness is not accidental, since even the critical theo logian remains a theologian. Hence, either he had to start from cer tain presuppositions of. philosophy accepted as authoritative; or if in the process of criticism and as a result of other people's discover ies doubts about these philosophical presuppositions have arisen in him, he abandons them without vindication and in a cowardly fash ion, abstracts from them showing his servile dependence on these presuppositions and his resentment at this dependence merely in a negative, unconscious and sophistical manner. [In this connection the critical theologian is either forever repeat ing assurances about the purity of his own criticism, or tries to 4. The full title of this collection of ar ticles is Einundzwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz (Twenty-One Sheets from Switzerland), Erster Teil, Ziirich and Winterthur, 1843. S. Engels' "Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy." 6. Ludwig Feuerbach,
Grundsatze der Philosophie der Zukunft (Principles of the Philosophy of the Future), Zurich and Winterthur, 1843. 7. Ludwig Feuerbach, Vorliiufige The sen zur Reformation der Philosophie (Preliminary Theses on the Reforma tion of Philosophy) published in Anek dot a, v o l. II.
8. Marx's abbreviation for Anekdota zur neuesten deutschen Philosophie und Publicistik (Unpublished Materials Re lated to Modern German Philosophy and Writing), a two-volume collection
published by Arnold Ruge in 'Switzer land. It included Marx's Notes on the
Latest Prussian Instruction to Censors Luther-the Arbiter Between Strauss and Feuerbach, and articles by and
Bruno Bauer, Ludwig Friedrich Koppen, Arnold
Feuerbach, Ruge, etc.
9. Marx has in mind Hauer and his fol lowers,
who were associated with
Allgemeine Lite,atur-Zeitung.
the
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 18 44
69
make it seem as though all that was left for criticism to deal with now was some other immature form of criticism outside itself-say eighteenth-century criticism-and the backwardness of the masses, in order to divert the observer's attention as well as his own from the necessary task of settling accounts between criticism and its point of origin-Hegelian dialectic and German philosophy as a whole-from this necessary raising of modern criticism above its own limitation and crudity. Eventually, however, whenever dis coveries (such as Feuerbach's) are made about the nature of his own philosophic presuppositions, the critical theologian partly makes it appear as if he were the one who had accomplished this, producing that appearance by taking the results of these discoveries and, without being able to develop them, hurling them in the form of catch-phrases at writers still caught in the confines of philoso phy; partly he even manages to acquire a sense of his own superior ity to such discoveries by covertly asserting in a veiled, malicious and sceptical fashion elements of the Hegelian dialectic which he still finds lacking in the criticism of that dialectic (which have not yet been critically served up to him for his use) against such criti cism-not having tried to bring such elements into their proper relation or having been capable of doing so, asserting, say, the cate gory o'f mediating proof against the category of positive, self originating truth, etc., in a way peculiar to Hegelian dialectic. For to the theological critic it seems quite natural that everything has to be done by philosophy, so that he can chatter away about purity, resoluteness, and utterly critical criticism; and he fancies himself the true conqueror of philosophy whenever he happens to feel some "moment" in Hegel1 ·to be lacking in Feuerbach-for however much he practises the spiritual idolatry of "self-consciousness" and "mind" the theological critic does not get beyond feeling to consciousness.] 2 On close inspection theological c rit ic ism-genuine ly progressive though it was at the inception of the movement-is seen in the final analysis to be nothing but the culmination and consequence of the old philosophical, and especially the Hegelian, transcenden� talism, twisted into a theological caricature. This interesting exam ple of the justice in history, which now assigns to theology, ever I. "Moment" is a technical term in He gelian philosophy meaning a vital ele ment of thought. The term is used to stress that thought is a process, and thus that elements in a system of thought are also phases in a movement. 2. In Hegel, "feeling" (Empfindung) denotes a relatively low form of mental life in which the subjective and the ob jective are still confused together.
"Consciousness" (Bewusstein)-the nalne given by Hegel to the first major section Qf his Phenomenology of Min';-denotes those forms of mental activity where a subject first seeks to comprehend an object. "Self-conscious ness" and "mind" denote subsequent, higher phases in the evolution of "ab solute knowledge" or "the absolute."
70
The Early Marx
philosophy's spot of infection, the further role of portraying in itself the negative dissolution of philosophy-i.e., the process of its decay-this historical nemesis I shall demonstrate on another occa sion. [How far, on the other hand, Feuerbach's discoveries about the nature of philosophy required still, for their Proof at least, a critical settling of accounts with philosophical dialectic will be seen from my exposition itself.]
Estranged Labour3 \Ve have proceeded from the premises of political economy. vVe have accepted its language and its laws. \Ve presupposed private property, the separation of labour, capital and land, and of wages, profit of capital and rent of land-likewise division of labour, competition, the concept of exchange-value, etc. On the basis of political economy itself, in its own words, we have shown that the 1\ worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the \' most wretched of commodities; that the wretchedness of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production; that the necessary result of competition is the accumu lation of capital in a few hands, and thus the restoration of monop oly in a more terrible form; that finally the distinction between cap italist and land-rentier, like that between the tiller of the soil and the factory-worker, disappears and that the whole of society must I fall apart into the two classes-the property-owners and the proper I tyless workers. Political economy proceeds from the fact of private property, but it does not explain it to us. It expresses in general, abstract formu lae the materiql.."p rocess through which private property actually : 'passes, andcofFIe:§e formulae it then takes for laws. It does not com \ prehend these laws-i.e., it does not demonstrate how they arise from the very nature of private property. Political economy does not disclose the source of the division between labour and capital, and between capital and land. \Vhen, for example, it defines the relationship of wages to profit, it takes the interest of the capitalists to be the ultimate cause; i.e., it takes for granted what it is sup posed to evolve. Similarly, competition comes in everywhere. It is explained from external circumstances. As to how far these external and apparently fortuitous circumstances are but the expression of a necessary course of development, political economy teaches us nothing. vVe have seen how, to it, exchange itself appears to be a
\
_
. -�
3. Die
Note
EntJremdete
on
Texts
and
Arbeit.
See the Terminology. p.
xli. above. for term. [R. T.]
a
discussion
of
this
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
71
fort�itous fact / _ �e"pnly wheels which political economy sets in . . motIon . .are i2vari�) and the war amongst the avarzczouscompetltzon.
' _ Ov..e:iL J-,VJL�" ( u ' -
-
Precisely because political economy does not grasp the connec tions within the movement, it was possible to counterpose, for instance, the doctrine of competition to the doctrine of monopoly, the doctrine of craft-liberty to the doctrine of the corporation, the doctrine of the division of landed property to the doctrine of the big estate-for competition, craft-liberty and the division of landed property were explained and comprehended only as fortuitous, pre meditated and violent consequences of monopoly, the corporation; and feudal property, not as their necessary, inevitable and natural '' consequences. , Now, therefore, we have to grasp the essential connection \ ; between private property, avarice, and the separation of labour, cap- 'j, ital and landed property; between exchange and competition, value / and the devaluation of men, monopoly and competition, etc.; the connection between this whole estrangement a,nd the mon�f� ' system. Do not let us go back to a fictitious primordial condition as the political economist does, when he tries to explain. Such a primor dial condition explains nothing. He merely pushes the question away into a grey nebulous distance. He assumes in the form of fact, of an event, what he is supposed to deduce-namely, the necessary relationship between two things-between, for example, division of labour and exchange. Theology in the same way explains the origin of evil by the fall of man: that is, it assumes as a fact, in historical form, what has to be explained. \Ve proceed from an actual economic 'fact. , The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. \Vith the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion the devaluation of the world of men. Labour pro duces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity-and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally. \ This fact expresses merely that the object which labour produces-labour's product-confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labour is labour which has been congealed in an object, which has become material: it is the objectification of labour. Labour's realization is its objectification. In the conditions dealt with by political econ omy this realization of labour appears as loss of reality for the work,
'
c
\ i
I
72
The Early Marx
ers; objectification as loss of the object and priation as estrangement, as alienation.4
obiect-bonda,ge; appro
So much does labour's realization appear as loss of reality that the worker loses reality to the point of starving to death. So much does objectification appear as loss of the object that the worker is robbed of the objects most necessary not only for his life but for his work. Indeed, labour itself becomes an object which he can get hold of only with the greatest effort and with the most irregular interruptions. So much does the appropriation of the object appear as estrangement that the more objects the worker produces the fewer can he possess and the more he falls under the dominion of his product, capital. All these consequences are contained in the definition that the worker is related to the
product of his labour as to an alien object.
For on this premise it is clear that the more the worker spends himself, the more powerful the alien objective world becomes which he creates over-against himself, the poorer he himself-his inner world-becomes, the less belongs to him as his own. It is the same in religion. The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself. The worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object. Hence, the greater this activity, the greater is the worker's lack of objects. \Vhatever the product of his labour is, he is not. Therefore the greater this product, the less is he himself. The
alienation of the worker in his
product means not only that his labour becomes an object, an
external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power of its own confronting him; it means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien. Let us now look more closely at the
objectification, at the pro estrangement, the loss of
duction of the worker; and therein at the the object, his product.
The worker can create nothing without nature, without the sen suous external world. It is the material on which his labor is mani fested, in which it is active, from which and by means of which it produces. But just as nature provides labor with the
means of life in the live without objects on which to operate, on the other hand, it also provides the means of life in the more sense that labour cannot
restricted sense-i.e., the means for the physical subsistence of the
worker himself. Thus the more the worker by his labour
appropriates the external means of
world, sensuous nature, the more he deprives himself of
life in the double respect: first, that the sensuous external world 4. "Alienation"-EntiiusseTung.
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
73
more and more ceases to be an object belonging to his labour-to be his labour's means of life; and secondly, that it more and more ceases to be means of life in the immediate sense, means for the physical subsistence of the worker. Thus in this double respect the worker becomes a slave of his object, first, in that he receives an object of labour, i.e., in that he receives work; and secondly, in that he receives means of subsist ence. Therefore, it enables him to exist, first, as a worker; and, second, as a physical subject. The extremity of this bondage is that it is only as a worker that he continues to maintain himself as a physical subject, and that it is only as a physical subject that he is a worker.
(The laws of political economy express the estrangement of the worker in his object thus: the more the worker produces, the less he has to consume; the more values he creates, the more valueless, the more unworthy he becomes; the better formed his product, the more deformed becomes the worker; the more civilized his object, the more barbarous becomes the worker; the mightier labour becomes, the more powerless becomes the worker; the more ingen ious labour becomes, the duller becomes the worker and the more he becomes nature's bondsman.) Political economy conceals the estrangement inherent i n the nature of labour by not considering the direct relationship between the worker (labour) and production. It is true that labour produces
for the rich wonderful things-but for the worker it produces priva tion. It produces palaces-but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty-but for the worker, deformity. It replaces labour by machines-but some of the workers it throws back to a barbarous type of labour, and the other workers it turns into machines. It pro duces intelligence-but for the worker idiocy, cretinism. The direct relationship of labour to its produce is the re.lation ship of the worker to the objects of his production. The relation
ship of the man of means to the objects of production and to pro duction itself is only a consequence of this first relationship-mid confirms it. \Ve shall consider this other aspect later. \Vhen we ask, then, what is the essential relationship of labour we are asking about the relationship of the worker to production. Till now we have been considering the estrangement, the aliena tion of the worker only in one of its aspects, i.e., the worker's rela tionship to the products of his labour. But the estrangement is manifested not only in the result but in the act of production within the producing activity itself. How would the worker come to face the product of his activity as a stranger, were it not that in the very act of production he was estranging himself from himself? The product is after all but the summary of the activity of production.
74
The Early Marx
If then the product of labour is alienation, production itself must be active alienation, the alienation of activity, the activity of aliena tion. In the estrangement of the object of labour is merely summa rized the estrangement, the alienation, in the activity of labour itself. \Vhat, then, constitutes the alienation of labour? First, the fact that lapour is e!.U!.rnal to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his esse�tial being; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He is at home when he is not working, and when he is working he is not at home. His labour is therefore not volun tary, but coerced; it is forced labour. It is therefore not the satisfac tion of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labour is shunned like the plague. External labour, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external charac ter of labour for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else's, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates independently of the individ ual-that is, operates on him as an alien, divine or diabolical activ ity-in the same way the worker's activity is not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self. As a result. therefore, man (the worker) no longer feels himself to be freely active in any but his animal functions-eating, drink ing, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc.; and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be any thing but an animal. \Vhat is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal. Certainly eating, drinking, procreating, etc., are also genuinely human functions. But in the abstraction which separates them from the sphere of all other human activity and turns them into sole and ultimate ends, they are animal. \Ve have considered the act of estranging practical human activ ity, labour, in two of its aspects. (1) T�:f!lation of the worker to tJll! prod'!!.�t of.labour as an alien object exerci �1 over hili!. This relation is at the same time the relation to the sensuous exter nal world, to the objects of nature as an alien world antagonistically opposed to him. (2) The relation of l:Wo!!.! t.�!!!.��roduc tiOlL¥.:ithillJll.e.labozIT proce:ili. This relation is the relation of the __
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worker to his own activity as an alien activity not belonging to him; it is activity as suffering, strength as weakness, begetting as emascu lating, the worker's own physical and mental energy, his personal life or what is life other than activity-as an activity which is turned against him, neither depends on nor belongs to him. Here we have self-estrangement, as we had previously the estrangement '0; of the thmg. \Ve have yet a third aspect of estranged labour to deduce from the two already considered. Man is a species being, not only beCa\lSe in practice and in theory he adopts the species as his object (his own as well as those of other things), but-and this is only another way of expressing it-but also because he treats himself as the actual, living species; because he treats himself as a universal and therefore a free being. The life of the species, both in man and in animals, consists physically in the fact that man (like the animal) lives on inorganic nature; and the more universal man is compared with an animal, the more universal is the sphere of inorganic nature on which he lives. Just as plants, animals, stones, the air, light, etc., constitute a part of human consciousness in the realm of theory, partly as objects of natural science, partly as objects of art-his spiritual inorganic nature, spiritual nourishment which he must first prepare to make it palatable and digestible-so too in the realm of practice they constitute a part of human life and human activity. Physically man lives only on these products of nature, whether they appear in the form of food, heating, clothes, a dwelling, or whatever it may be. The universality of man is in practice manifested precisely in the universality which makes all nature his inorganic body-both 'inasmuch as nature is (1) his direct means of life, and (2) the material, the object, and the instrument of his life-activity. Nature is man's inorganic body-nature, that is, in so far as it is not itself the human body. Man lives on nature-means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous intercourse if he is not to die. That man's physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature. In estranging from man (1) nature, and (2) himself, his own· active functions, his life-activity, estranged labour estranges the spe cies from man. It turns for him the life of the species into a means of individual life. First it estranges the life of the species and indi vidual life, and secondly it makes individual life in its abstract form the purpose of the life of the species, likewise in its abstract and estranged form. For in the first place labour, life-activity, productive life itself, appears to man merely as a means of satisfying a need-the need
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to maintain the physical existence. Yet the productive life is the life of the species. It is life-engendering life. The whole character of a species-its species character-is contained in the character of its life-activity; and free, conscious activity is man's species character. Life itself appears only as a means to life. The animal is immediately identical with its life-activity. It does not distinguish itself from it. It is its life-activity. Man makes his life-activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness. He has conscious life-activity. It is not a determination with which he directly merges. Conscious life-activity directly distinguishes man from animal life-activity. It is just because of this that he is a spe cies being. Or it is only because he is a species being that he is a Conscious Being, i.e., that his own life is an object for him. Only because of that is his activity free activity. Estranged labour reverses this relationship, so that it is just because man is a con scious being that he makes his life-activity, his' essential being, a mere means to his existence. In creating an objective world by his practical activity, in w o rk ing-up inorganic nature, man proves himself a conscious species being, i.e., as a being that treats the species as its own essential being, or that treats itself as a species being. Admittedly animals also produce. They build themselves nests, dwellings, like the bees, beavers, ants, etc. But an animal only produces what it immediately needs for itself or its young. It produces one-sidedly, whilst man produces universally. It produces. only under the dominion of immediate physical need, whilst man produces even when he is free from physical need and only truly produces in freedom therefrom. An animal produces only itself, whilst man reproduces the whole of nature. An animal's product belongs immediately to its physical body, whilst man freely confronts his product. An animal forms things in accordance with the standard and the need of the species to which it belongs, whilst man knows how to produce in accord ance with the standard of every species, and knows how to .apply everywhere the inherent standard to the object. Man therefore also forms things in accordance with the laws of beauty. It is just in the working-up of the objective world, therefore, that man first really proves himself to be a species being. This produc tion is his active species life. Through and because of this produc tion, nature appears as his work and his reality. The object of la bour is, therefore, the objectification of man's species life: for he duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he contemplates himself in a world that he has created. In tearing away from man the object of his production, therefore, estranged labour tears from him his spe cies life, his real species objectivity, and transforms his advantage
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over animals into the disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him. Similarly, in degrading spontaneous activity, free activity, to a estranged labour makes man's species life a means to his eans, m existence. hysical p The consciousness which man has of his species is thus trans formed by estrangement in such a way that the species life becomes for him a means. Estranged labour turns thus: (3) Man's species being, both nature and his spiritual species property, into a being alien to him, into a means to his individual existence. It estranges man's own body from him, as it does exter nal nature and his spiritual essence, his human being. (4) An immediate consequence of the fact that man is estranged from the product of his labour, from his life-activity, from his spe cies being is the estrangement of man from man. If a man is con fronted by himself, he is confronted by the other man. "Vhat applies to a man's relation to his work, to the product of his labour and to himself, also holds of a man's relation to the other man, and to the other man's labour and object of labour. In fact, the proposition that man's species nature is estranged from him means that one man is estranged from the other, as each of them is from man's essential nature.5 The estrangement of man, and in fact every relationship in which man stands to himself, is first realized and expressed in the relationship in which a man stands to other men. Hence within the relationship of estranged labour each man views the other in accordance with the standard and the position in which he finds himself as a worker. We took our departure from a fact of political economy-the estrangement of the worker and his production. "Ve have formu lated the concept of this fa ct-estrang ed alienated labour. We have analysed this concept-hence analysing merely a fact of political economy. . Let us now see, further, how in real life the concept of estranged, alienated labour must express and present itself. If the product of labour is alien to me, if it confronts me as an . alien power, to whom, then, does it belong? If my own activity does not belong to me, if it is an alien, a coerced activity, to whom, then, does it belong? To a being other than me. Who is this being? The gods? To be sure, in the earliest times the principal produc,
s. "Species nature" (and, earlier, "species being")-Gattungswesen; "man's
essential nature"-menschlichen Wesen.
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tion (for example, the building of temples, etc., in Egypt, India and Mexico ) appears to be in the service of the gods, and the prod uct belongs to the gods. However, the gods on their own were never the lords of labour. No more was nature . And what a contra diction it would be if, the more man subjugated nature by his labour and the more the miracles of the gods were rendered super fluous by the miracles of industry, the more man were to renounce the joy of production and the enjoyment of the produce in favour of these powers. The alien being, to whom labour and the produce of labour belongs, in whose service labour is done and for whose benefit the produce of labour is provided, can only be man himself. If the product of labour does not belong to the worker, if it con fronts him as an alien power, this can only be because it belongs to some other man than the worker. If the worker's activity is a tor ment to him, to another it must be delight and his life's joy. Not the gods, not nature, but only man himself can be this alien power over man. \Ve must bear in mind the above-stated proposition that man's relation to himself only becomes o bjective and real for him through his relation to the other man. Thus, if the product of his labour, his labour objectified, is for him an alien, hostile, powerful object independent of him, then his position towards it is such that some one else is master of this object, someone who is alien, hostile, pow erful, and independent of him . If his own activity is to him an unfree activity, then he is treating it as activity performed in the service, under the dominion, the coercion and the yoke of another man. Every self-estrangement of man from himself and from nature appears in the relation in which he places himself and nature to men other than and differentiated from himself. For this reason religious self-estrangement necessarily appears in the relationship of the layman to the priest, or again to a mediator, etc., since we are here dealing with the intellectual world. In the real practical world self-estrangement can only become manifest through 'the real practi cal relationship to other men. The medium through which estrangement takes place is itself practical. Thus through estranged labour man not only engenders his relationship to the object and to the act of production as to powers that are alien and hostile to him; he also engenders the relationship in which other men stand to his production and to his product, and the relationship in which he stands to these other men. Just as h� begets his own production as the, loss of his reality, as his punishment; just as he begets his own product as a loss, as a product not belonging to him; so he begets the dom inion of the one who does not produce over produc-
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tion and over the product. Just as he estranges from himself h is own activity, so he confers to the stranger activity which is not his own. Till now we have only considered this relationship from the s tandpoint of the worker and later we shall be considering it also from the stand point of the non-worker. Through estranged, alienated labour, then, the worker produces the relationship to this labour of a man alien to labour and stand ing outside it. The relationship of the worker to labour engenders the relation to it of the capitalist, or whatever one chooses to call the master of labour. Private property is thus the product, the ' result, the necessary consequence, of alienated labour, of the exter nal relation of the worker to nature and to himself. Private property thus results by analysis from the concept o f alienated labour-i.e., of alienated man, of estranged labour, of estranged life, of. estranged man. True, it is as a result of the movement of private property that we have obtained the concept of alienated labour ( of alienated life) from political economy. But on analysis of this concept it becomes clear that though private property appears to be the source, the cause of alienated labour, it is really its consequence, just as the gods in the beginning are not the cause but the effect of man's intellectual confusion. Later this relationship becomes recip rocal. Only at the very culmination of the development of private prop· erty does this, its secret, re-emerge, namely, that on the one hand it is the product of alienated labour, and that secondly it is the means by which labour alienates itself, the realization of this aliena-tion.
This exposition immediately sheds light on various hitherto unsolved conflicts. ( 1 ) Political economy starts from labour as the real soul of pro� duction; yet to labour it gives nothing, and to private property every thing. From this contradiction Proudhon has concluded in favour of labour and against private property. \Ve understand, however, that this apparent contradiction is the contradiction of estranged labour with itself, and that political economy has merely formu lated the laws of estranged labour. We also understand, therefore, that wages and private property are identical : where the product, the object of labour pays for labour itself, the wage is but a necessary consequence of labour's estrangement, for after all in the wage of labour, labour does not appear as an end in itself but as the servant of the wage. \Ve shaH develop this point later, and meanwhile will only deduce some con clusions.
:
)
ji
lil :· 1 I
p· I:
1
f
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A forcing-up of wages (disregarding all other difficulties, includ ing the fact that it would only be by force, too, that the higher wages, being an anomaly, could be maintained) would therefore be nothing but better payment for the slave, and would not conquer either for the worker or for labour their human status and dignity. Indeed, even the equality of wages demanded by Proudhon only transforms the relationship of the present-day worker to his labour into the relationship of all men to labour. Society is then conceived as an abstract capitalist. \Vages a re a direct consequence of estranged labour, and estranged labour is the direct cause of private property. The down fall of the one aspect must therefore mean the downfall of the other. (2 ) From the relationship of estranged labour to private prop erty it further follows that the emancipation of society from private property, etc., from servitude, is expressed in the political form of the emancipation of the workers; not that their emancipation alone was at stake but because the emancipation of the workers contains universal human emancipation-and it contains this, because the whole of human servitude is involved in the relation of the worker to production, and every relation of servitude is but a modification and consequence of this relation. Just as we have found the concept of private property from the concept of estranged, alienated labour by analysis, in the same way every category of political economy can be evolved with the help of these two factors; and we shall find again in each category, e.g., trade, competition, capital, money, only a definite and developed expression of the first foundations. Before considering this configuration, however, let us try to solve two problems. ( 1 ) To define the general nature of private property, as it has arisen as a result of estranged labour, in its relation to truly human, social property. ( 2 ) \Ve have accepted the estrangement of labour, its alienation, as a fact, and we have analysed this fact. How, we now ask, does man come to alienate, to estrange, his labour? How is this estrange ment rooted in the nature of human development? \Ve have already gone a long way to the solution of this problem by trans forming the question as to the origin of private property into the question as to the relation of alienated labour to the course of h umanity's development. For when one speaks of private property, one thinks of being concerned with something external to man. \Vhen one speaks of labour, one is directly concerned with man himself. This new formulation of the question already contains its solution.
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A s to (1): The general nature o f private property and its rela t ion to truly human property. Alienated labour has resolved itself for us into two elements which mutually condition one another, or which are but different expressions of one and the same relationship. Appropriation appears as estrangement, as alienation; and alienation appears as appropria tion, estrangement as true enfranchisement. \Ve have considered the one side-alienated labour in relation to the worker himself, i.e., the relation of alienated labour to itself. The property-relation of the non-worker to the worker and to labour we have found as the product, the necessary outcome of this relation of alienated labour. Private property, as the material, sum mary expression of alienated labour, embraces both relations-the relation of the worker to work, to the product of his labour and to t he non-worker, and the relation of the non-worker to the worker and to the product of his labouT. Having seen that in relation to the worker who appropriate� nature by means of his labour, this appropriation appears as estrangement, his own spontaneous activity as activity for another and as activity of another, vitality as a sacrifice of life, production of the object as loss of the object to an alien power, to an alien per son-we shall now consider the relation to the worker, to labour and its object of this person who is alien to labour and the worker. First it has to be noticed, that everything which appears in the worker as an activity of alienation, of estrangement, appears in the non-worker as a state of alienation, of estrangement. Secondly, that the worker's real, practica l attitude in production and to the product (as a state of mind ) appears in the non-worker confronting him as a theoretical attitude. Thirdly, the non-worker does everything against the worker which the worker does against himself; but he does not do against himself what he does against the worker. Let us look more closely at these three relations.6
Private Property and Communism Re. p. XXXIX. The antithesis of propertylessness and property so long as it is not comprehended as the antithesis of labour and capital, still remains an antithesis of indifference, not grasped in its active connection, its internal relation-an antithesis not yet grasped as a contradiction. It can find expression in this first form even without the advanced development of private property ( as in ancient Rome, Turkey, etc. ) . It does not yet appear as having been established by private property itself. But labour, the subjective 6. At this point the first manuscript breaks off unfinished.
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essence of private property as exclusion of property, and capital, objective labour as exclusion of labour, constitute private property as its developed state of contradiction-hence a dynamic relation ship moving inexorably to its resolution. Re. the same page. The transcendence of self-estrangement fol lows the same course as self-estrangement.. Private property is first considered only in its objective aspect-but nevertheless with labour as its essence. Its form of existence is therefore capital, which is to be annulled "as such" (Proudhon) . Or a particular form of labour-labour levelled down, parcelled, and therefore unfree-is conceived as the source of private property's pernicious ness and of its existence in estrangement from men; for instance, Fourier, who, like the physiocrats, also conceived agricultural labour to be at least the exemplary type, whilst Saint-Simo n declares in contrast that industrial labour as such is the essence, and now also aspires to the exclusi ve rule of the industrialists and the improve , ment of the workers' condition. Finally, communism is the positive \ expression of annulled private property-at first as universal private property. By embracing this relation as a whole, communism is : ( 1) In its first form only a generalization and consummation of this relationship. It shows itself a s such in a twofold form: on the one hand, the dominion of material property bulks so large that it wants to destroy everything which is not capable of being possessed by all as private property. It wants to abstract by force from talent, etc. For it the sole purpose of life and existence is direct, physical possession. The category of labourer is not done away with, but extended to all men. The relationship of private property persists as the relationship of the community to the world of things. Finally, this movement of counter posing universal private property to pri vate property finds expression in the bestial form of counter posing to marriage (,certainly a form of exclusive private property ) the contmunity of women, in which a woman becomes a piece of com munal and common property. It may be said that this idea of the community of women gives away the secret of this as yet com pletely crude and thoughtless communism. Just as the woman passes from marriage to general prostitution,7 so the entire world of wealth (that is, of man's objective substance) passes from the rela-. tionship of exclusive marriage with the owner of private property to a state of universal prostitution with the community. In negating the personality of man in every sphere, this type of communism is really nothing but the logical expression of private property, which
\
7. Prostitution is only a specific expres sion of the general prostitution of the labourer, and since it is a relationship in which
falls
not
the
prostitute
alone,
but also the one who prostitutes-and the latter's abomination is still greater-the capitalist, etc., also comes under this head. [Marx]
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is this negation. General envy constituting itself as a power is the disguise in which avarice re-establishes itself and satisfies itself, only in another way. The thoughts of every piece of private prop erty-inherent in each piece as such-are at least turned against all wealthier private property in the form of envy and the urge to reduce to a common level, so that this envy and urge even consti tute the essence of competition. The crude communism is only the consummation of this envy and of this levelling-down proceeding from the preconceived minimum. It has a definite, limited stand ard. How little this annulment of private property is really an appropriation is in fact proved by the abstract negation of the entire world of culture and civilization, the regression to the unnat -ural simplicity of the poor and undemanding man who has not only failed to go beyond private property, but has not yet even attained to it. The community is only a community of labour, and an equality of wages paid out by the communal capital-the community as the universal capitalist. Both sides of the relationship are raised to an imagined universality-labour as a state in which every person is put, and capital as the acknowledged universality and power of the community. In the approach to woman as the spoil and handmaid of commu nal lust is expressed the infinite degradation in which man exists for himself, for the secret of this approach has its unambiguous, decisive, plain and undisguised expression in the relation of man to woman and in the manner in which the direct and natural procrea tive relationship is conceived. The direct, natural, and necessary relation of person to person is the relation of man to woman. In this natural relationship of the sexes man's relation to nature is immediately his relation to man, just as his relation to man is immediately his relation to nature-his own natural function. In this relationship, therefore, is sensuously manifested, reduced to an observable fact, the extent to which the human essence has become nature to man, or to which nature has to him become the human essence of man. From this relationship one can therefore judge man's whole level of development. It follows from the character of this relationship how much man as a species being, as man, has come to be himself and to comprehend himself; the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being. It therefore reveals the extent to which man's natural behaviour has become human, or the extent to which the human essence in him has become a natural essence-the extent to which his human nature has come to be nature to him. In this relation ship is revealed, too, the extent to which man's need has hecome a human need; the extent to which, therefore, the other person as a
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person has become for him a need-the extent to which he in his individual existence is at the same time a social being. The first positive annulment of private property crude communism-is thus merely one form in which the vileness of private property, which wants to set itself up as the positive community, comes to the surface. (2) Communism (a) of a political nature still-democratic or despotic; (b) with the annulment of the state, yet still incomplete, and being still affected by private property (i.e., by the estrange ment of man). In both forms communism already knows itself to be re-integration or return of man to himself, the transcendence of h uman self-estrangement; but since it has not yet grasped the posi tive essence of private property, and just as little the human nature of need, it remains captive to it and infected by it. It has, indeed, grasped its concept, but not its essence. (3) Communism as the positive transcendence of private prop erty, or human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appro priation of the human essence by and for man; communism there fore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being-a return become conscious, and accomplished within the entire wealth of previous development. This commu nism, as fully-developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully-developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine reso lution of the conflict between man and nature and between man .and man-the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between free 'dom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Com ;munism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution. The entire m ovement of history is, therefore, both its actual act of genesis (the birth act of its empirical existence) and also for its thinking consciousness the comprehended and known process of its coming-to-be. That other, still immature communism, meanwhile, seeks an historical proof for itself-a proof in the realm of the exis tent-amongst disconnected historical phenomena opposed to pri vate property, tearing single phases from the historical process and focussing attention on them as proofs of its historical pedigree (a horse ridden hard especially by Ca bet, Villegardelle, etc.) . B y so doing it simply makes clear that by far the greater part of this proc ess contradicts its claims, and that, if it has once been, precisely its being in the past refutes its pretension to being essential. That the entire revolutionary movement necessarily finds both its empirical and its theoretical basis in the movement of private prop er ty in that of the economy, to be precise-is easy to see. This material, immediately sensuous private property is the mate-
-
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rial sensuaus expressian of estranged human life. Its mavement productian and cansumptian-is the sensuaus revelatian af the mavement af all productian hitherta-i.e., the realizatian ar the reality af man. Religian, family, state, law, morality, science, art, etc., are anly particular mades af productian, and fall under its gen eral law. The pasitive transcendence af private property as the appropriatian af human life is, therefore, the pasitive transcend ence af all estrangement-that is to' say, the return af man from religian, family, state, etc., to' his human, i.e., social made af exist ence. Religiaus estrangement as such accurs anly in the realm af cansciousness, af man's inner life, but ecanamic estrangement is that af real life; its transcendence therefare embraces bath aspects . It is evident that the initial stage af the mavement amangst the variaus peaples depends an whether the true and for them authen tic life af the peaple manifests itself more in cansciausness ar in the external warld-is mare ideal ar real . Cammunism begins fram the autset (Owen ) with atheism; but atheism is at first far from being communism; indeed, it is still mastly an abstractian . The philanthropy af atheism is therefare at first anly philosophi cal, abstract, philanthropy, and that af cammunism is at ance real and directly bent an action. We have seen haw an the premise af pasitively annulled private property man produces man-himself and the ather man; haw the abject, being the direct embadiment af his individuality, is simulta neausly his awn existence far the ather man, the existence af the ather man, and that existence far him. Likewise, hawever, bath the material af labaur and man as the subject, are the paint af depar ture as well as the result af the mavement (and precisely in this fact, that they must constitute the point of departure, lies the his tarical necessity a f private property ) . Thus the social character is the general character af the whale mavement: just as saciety itself produces man as man, So' is saciety produced by him. Activity and cansumptian, bath in their cantent and in their mode of existence, are social: social activity and social cansumptian; the human essence af nature first exists anly far sacial man; for anly here daes nature exist far him as a bond with man-as his existence for the ather and the ather's existence for him-as the life-element af the human warld; anly here daes nature exist as the foundation af his awn human existence. Only here has what is to' him his natural existence became his human existence, and nature became man for him. Thus society is the cansummated aneness in substance af man and nature-the true resurrectian af nature-the naturalism af man and the humanism af nature bath brought to' fulfilment. Sacial activity and sacial cansumptian exist by nO' means only in the farm af same directly cammunal activity and directly commu-
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nal consumption, although communal activity and communal con sumption-i.e., activity and consumption which are manifested and directly confirmed in real association with other men-will occur wherever such a direct expression of sociality stems from the true character of the activity's content and is adequate to the nature of consumption. But again when I am active scientifically, etc.,-when I am engaged in activity which I can seldom perform in direct commu nity with others-then I am social, because I am active as a man. Not only is the material of my activity given to me as a social prod uct (as is even the language in which the thinker is active) : my own existence is social activity, and therefore that which I make of myself, I make of myself for society and with the consciousness of .... myself as a social being. My general consciousness is only the theoretical shape of that of which the living shape is the real community, the social fabric, although at the present day general consciousness is an abstraction from real life and as such antagonistically confronts it. Conse quently, too, the activity of my general consciousness, as an activ ity, is my theoretical existence as a social being. \Vhat is to be avoided above all is the re-establishing of "Society" as an abstraction vis-a-vis the individual. The individual is the social being. His life, even if it may not appear in the direct form of a communal life carried out together with others-is therefore an expression and confirmation of social life. Man's individual and species life are not different, however much-and this i s inevi table-the mode of existence of the individual is a more particular, or more general mode of the life of the species, or the life of the species is a more particular or more general individual life. In his consciousness of species man confirms his real social life and simply repeats his real existence in thought, just as conversely the being of the species confirms itself in species-consciousness and is for itself in its generality as a thinking being. Man, much as he may therefore be a particular individual (and it is precisely his particularity which makes h i m an individual, and a real individual social being) , is just as much the totality-the ideal totality-the subjective existence of thought and experienced society present for itself; just as he exists also in the real world as the awareness and the real enjoyment of social existence, and as a totality of human life-activity. Thinking and being are thus no doubt distinct, but at the same time they are in unity with each other. Death seems to be a harsh victory of the species over the definite individual and to contradict their unity. But the determinate indi vidual is only a determinate species being, and as such mortal.
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(4) Just as private property is only the sensuous expression of the fact that man becomes obiective for himself and at the same time becomes to himself a strange and inhuman object; j ust as it expresses the fact that the assertion of his life is the alienation of his life, that his realization is his loss of reality, is an alien reality: conversely, the positive transcendence of private property-i.e., the sensuous appropriation for and by man of the human essence and of human life, of objective man, of human achievements-is not to be conceived merely in the sense of direct, one-sided grati fication-merely in the sense of possessing, of having. Man appropriates his total essence in a total manner, that is to say, as a whole man. Each of his human relations to the world-seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking, being aware, sensing, wanting, acting, loving-in short, all the organs of his individual being, like those organs which are directly social in their form, are in their objective orientation or in their orientation to the obiect, the appropriation of that object, the appropriation of the human world; their orientation to the object is the manifestation of the human world;8 it is human efficaciousness and human suffe ring for suffering, apprehended humanly, is an enjoyment of self in man. Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it-when it exists for us as capi tal, or when it is directly possessed, eaten, drunk, worn, inhabited, etc.,-in short, when it is used by us. Although private property itself again conceives all these direct realizations of possession as means of life, and the life which they serve as means is the life of private propert y-labour and conversion into capital. In place of all these physical and mental senses there has there fore come the sheer estrangement of all these senses-the sense of having. The human being had to be reduced to this absolute pov erty in o rder that he might yield his inner wealth to the outer world. ( On the category of "having," see Hess in the Twenty-One Sheets. ) The transcendence of private property is therefore the complete emancipation of all human senses and attributes; but it is this emancipation precisely because these senses and attributes have become, subjectively and objectively, human. The eye has become a human eye, just as its obiect has become a social, human object-an object emanating from man for man . The senses have therefore become directly in their practice theoreticians. They relate themselves to the thing for the sake of the thing, but the thing itself is an obiective human relation to itself and to man,9 . ,
8. For this reason it is just as highly priced as the determinations of human essence and activities. [Mar:t] 9. In practil;e I can relate myself to a
thing humanly only if the thing relates itself to the human being humanly.
[Marx]
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and vice versa. Need or enjoyment have consequently lost their ego tistical nature, and nature has lost its mere utility by use becoming human use. In the same way, the senses and enjoyments of other men have become my own appropriation. Besides these direct organs, there fore, social organs develop in the form of society; thus, for instance, activity in direct association with others, etc., has become an organ for expressing my own life, and a mode of appropriating human life. It is obvious that the human eye gratifies itself in a way different from the crude, non·human eye; the human ear different fr9m the crude ear, etc. To recapitulate; man is not lost in his object only when the object becomes for him a human object or objective man. This is possible only when the object becomes for him a social object, he himself for himsel f a social being, just as society becomes a being for him in this object. On the one hand, therefore, it is only when the objective world becomes everywhere for man in society the world of man's essential powers1-human reality, and for that reason the reality of his own essential powers-that all objects become for him the objectifica tion of himself, become objects which confirm and realize his indi viduality, become his objects: that is, man himself becomes the object. The manner in which they become his depends on the nature of the objects and on the nature of the essential power cor responding to it; for it is precisely the determinateness of this rela tionship which shapes the particular, real mode of affirmation. To the eye an object comes to be other than it is to the ear, and the object of the eye is another object than the object of the ear. The peculiarity of each essential power is precisely its peculiar essence, and therefore also the peculiar mode of its objectification, of its objectively actual living being. Thus man is affirmed in the objec tive world not only in the act of thinking, but with all his senses. On the other hand, looking at this in its subjective aspect: just as music alone awakens in man the sense of music, and just as the most beautiful music has no sense for the unmusical ear-is no object for it, because my object can only be the confirmation of one of my essential powers and can therefore only be so for me as my essential power is present for itself as a subjective capacity, because the sense of an object for me goes only so far as my senses go (has only sense for a sense corresponding to that object) -for this reason the senses of the social man are other senses than those of the non-social man. Only through the objectively unfolded richpowers"-Wesenskrcijte: 1. "Essential i.e., powers belongin g to me as part of
my essential nature, my very being.
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ness of man's essential being is the richness of subjective human sensibility (a musical ear, an eye for beauty of form-in short, senses capable of human gratifications, senses confirming them selves as essential powers of man ) either cultivated or brought into being. For not only the five senses but also the so-called mental senses-the practical senses (will, love, etc. ) -in a word, human sense-the humanness of the senses-comes to be by virtue of its object, by virtue of humanized nature. The forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present. The sense caught up in crude practical need has only a restricted sense. For the starving man, it is not the human form of food that exists, but only its abstract being as food; ·it could just as well be there in its crudest form, and it would be impossible to say wherein this feeding-activity differs from that of animals. The care-burdened man in need has no sense for the finest play; the dealer in minerals sees only the mercantile value but not the beauty and the unique nature of the mineral: he has no mineralogical sense. Thus, the objectification of the human essence both in its theoretical and practical aspects is required to make man's sense human, as well as to create the human sense corresponding to the entire wealth of human and natural substance. Just as resulting from the movement of private property, of its wealth as well as its poverty-or of its material and spiritual wealth and poverty-the budding society finds to hand all the material for this development: so established society produces man in this entire richness of his being-produces the rich man profoundly endowed with all the senses-as its enduring reality. It will be seen how subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and suffering, only lose their antithetical character, and thus their existence, as such antitheses in the social condition; it will be seen how the resolution of the theoretical antitheses is only possible in a practical way, by virtue of the practi cal energy of men . Their resolution is therefore by no means merely, a problem of knowledge, but a real problem of life, which philoso p hy could not solve precisely because it conceived this problem as merely a theoretical one. It will be seen how the history of industry and the established objective existence of industry are the open book of man's essential powers, the exposure to the senses of human psychology. Hitherto this was not conceived in its inseparable connection with man's essential being, but only in an external relation of utility, because, moving in the realm of estrangement, people could only think man's general mode of being-religion or history in its abstract general character as politics, art, literature, etc.,-to be the reality
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of man's essential powers 'lnd man's species-activity . \Ve have before us the objectified essential powers of man in the form of sensuous, alien, useful objects, in the form of estrangement, dis played in ordinary material industry (which can be conceived as a part of that general movement, just as that movement can be con ceived as a particular part of industry, since all human activity hith· erto has been labour-that is, industry-activity estranged from itself ) . A psychology for which this, the part of history most contempo rary and accessible to sense, remains a closed book, cannot become a genuine, comprehensive and real science. \Vhat indeed are we to think of a science which airily abstracts from this large part of human labour and which fails to feel its own incompleteness, while such a wealth of human endeavour unfolded before it means noth ing more to it than, perhaps, what can be expressed in one word "need " "vulgar need"? The natural sciences have developed an enormous activity and have accumulated a constantly growing mass of material . Philoso phy, however, has remained just as alien to them as they remain to philosophy. Their momentary unity was only a chimerical illusion. The will was there, but the means were lacking . Even historiogra· phy pays regard to nahiral science only occasionally, as a factor of enlightenment and utility arising from individual great discoveries. But natural science has invaded and transformed human life all the more practically through the medium of industry; and has prepared human emancipation, however directly and much it had to con summate dehumanization, Industry is the actual, historical relation of nature, and therefore of natural science, to man. I f, therefore, industry is conceived as the exoteric revelation of man's essential powers, we also gain an understanding of the human essence of nature or the natural essence of man. In consequence, natural sci ence will lose its abstractly material-or rather, its idealistic tendency, and will become the basis of human science, as it has already become the basis of actual human life, albeit in an estranged form. OJ,lf! basis for life al)�Lanothe;r basis for scie.nee i s a priC?,7:i,a.Jie. The nature '\vhlch"cm;;-es to be in human history-the "genesis of human society-is man's real nature; hence nature as it ' comes to be through industry, even though in an estranged form, is true anthropological nature. Sense-perception ( see Feuerbach) must be the basis of all sci ence. Only when it proceeds from sense-perception in the twofold form both of sensuous consciousness and of sensuous need-that is, only when science proceeds from nature-is it true science. All his tory is the preparation for "man" to become the object of sensuous consciousness, and for the needs of "man as man" to become [natural, sensuous1 needs. History itself is a real part of natural his· -
,
..
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tor y-of nature's coming to be man. Natural science will in time subsume under itself the science of man, just as the science of man will subsume under itself natural science: there will be one science. Man is the immedi-ate object of natural science: for immediate, sensuous nature for man is, immediately, human sensuousness (the expressions are identical ) -presented immediately in the form of the other man sensuously present for him. For his own sensuous ness first exists as human sensuousness for himself through the other man . But nature is the immediate object of the science of man: the first object of man-man-is nature, sensuousness; and the particular human sensuous essential powers can only find their self-knowledge in the science of the natural world in general, since they can find their objective realization in natural objects only_ The element of thought itself-the element of thought's living expres sion la n g uage-is of a sensuous nature. The social reality of nature, and human natural science, or the natural science about man, are identical terms. I t will be seen how in place of the wealth and poverty of politi cal economy come the rich human being and rich human need . The rich human being is simultaneously the human being in need of a totality of human life·activities-the man in whom his own realization exists as an inner necessity, as need. Not only wealth, but likewise the poverty of man-given socialism-receives in equal measure a human and therefore social significance. Poverty is the passive bond which causes the human being to experience the need of the- greatest wealth-the other human being_ The dominion of the objective being in me, the sensuous outburst of my essential activity, is emotion, which thus becomes here the activity of my being. ( 5 ) A being only considers himself independent when he stands on his own feet; and he only stands on his own feet when he owes his existence to himself. A man who lives by the grace of another regards himself as a dependent being. But I live completely by the grace of another if lowe him not only the sustenance of my life, but if he has, moreover, created my life-if he is the source of my life; and if it is not of my own creation, my life has necessarily a source of this kind outside it. The Creation is therefore an idea very difficult to dislodge from popular consciousness. The self mediated being of nature and of man is incomprehensible to it, because it contradicts everything palpable in practical life. The creation of the earth has received a mighty blow from geo gen -i.e., from the science which presents the formation of the earth, the coming-to-be of the earth, as a process, as self-generation. Generatio aequivoca2 is the only practical refutation of the theory of creation. -
2. Spontaneous generation.
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Now it is certainly easy to say to the single individual what Aris totle has already said. You have been begotten by your father and your mother; therefore in you the mating of two human beings-a species-act of human beings-has produced the human being. You see, therefore, that even physically, man owes his existence to man. Therefore you must not only keep sight of the one aspect-the infinite progression which leads you further to enquire: "\Vho begot my father? \Vho his grandfather?", etc. You must also hold on to the circular movement sensuously perceptible in that progres sion, by which man repeats himself in procreation, thus always remaining the subject. You will reply, however: I grant you this cir cular movement; now grant me the progression which drives me even further until I ask: \Vho begot the first man, and nature as a whole? I can only answer you: Your question is itself a product of abstraction. Ask yourself how you arrived at that question . Ask yourself whether your question is not posed from a standpoint to which I cannot reply, because it is a perverse one. Ask yourself whether that progression as such exists for a reasonable mind. \Vhen you ask about the creation of nature and man, you are ab stracting, in so doing, from man and nature. You postulate them as non-existent, and yet you want me to prove them to you as exist ing. Now I say to you: Give up your abstraction and you will also give up your question. Or if you want to hold on to your abstrac tion, then be consistent, and if you think of man and nature as non-existent, then think of yourself as non-existent, for you too are surely nature and man. Don't think, don't ask me, for as soon as you think and. ask, your abstraction from the existence of nature and man has no meaning. Or are you such an egoist that you pos tulate everything a s nothing, and yet want yourself to be? You can reply: I do not want to postulate the nothingness of nature. I ask you about its genesis, just as I ask the anatomist about the formation of bones, etc. But since for the socialist man the entire so-called history of the world is nothing but the begetting of man through human labour, nothing but the coming-to-be of nature for man, he has the visible, irrefutable proof of his birth through himself, of his process of coming-to-be. Since the real existence of man and nature has become practical, sensuous and perceptible-since man has become for man as the being of nature, and nature for man as the being of man-the question about an a lien peing about a being above nature and man-a question which implies the admission of the inessentiality of nature and of man-has become impossible in practice. Atheism, as the denial of this inessentiality, has no longer any meaning, for atheism is a negation of God, and postulates the existence of man through this negation; but socialism as socialism ,
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no longer stands in any need of such a mediation. It proceeds from the practically and theoretically sensuous consciousness of man and of nature as the essence. Socialism is man's positive self-con sciousness no longer mediated through the annulment of reli gion, just as real life is man's positive reality, no longer mediated through the annulment of private property, through communism. Communism is the position as the negation of the negation, and is hence the actual phase necessary for the next stage of historical development in the process of human emancipation and recovery. Communism is the necessary pattern and the dynamic principle of the immediate future, but communism as such is not the goal of human development-the structure of human society.
The l\leaning of Human Requirements \Ve have seen what significance, given socialism, the wealth of human needs has, and what significance, therefore, both a new mode of production and a new object of production have: a new manifestation of the forces of human nature and a new enrichment of human nature.3 Under private property their significance is reversed: every person speculates on creating a new need in another, so as to drive him to a fresh sacrifice, to place him in a new depend ence and to seduce him into a new mode of gratification and there fore economic ruin. Each tries to establish over the other an alien power, so as thereby to find satisfaction .of his own selfish need. The increase in the quantity of objects is accompanied by an extension of the realm of the alien powers to which man is subjected, and every new product represents a new potency of mutual swindling and mutual plundering. Man becomes ever poorer as man; his need for money becomes ever greater if he wants to overpower hostile being; and the power of his money declines exactly in inverse pro portion to the increase in the volume of production: that is, his neediness grows as the power of money increases . The need for money is therefore the true need produced by the modern economic system, and it is the only need which the latter produces. The quantity of money becomes to an ever greater deg'ree its sole effective attribute: just as it reduces everything to its abstract form, so it reduces itself in the course of its own movement t.o something merely quantitative. Excess and intemperance come to be its true norm. Subjectively, this is even partly manifested in that the extension of products and needs falls into contriving and ever calculating subservience to inhuman, refined, ullTIatural and imagi nary appetites.Private property does not know how to change crude 3. Forces of human nature:
Wesens.
menschlichen Wesenkra/t; human nature: menschlichell
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The Early Marx
need into human need. Its idealism is fantasy, caprice and whim; and no eunuch flatters his despot more basely or uses more despica ble means to stimulate his dulled capacity for pleasure in order to sneak a favour for himself than does the industrial eunuch-the producer-in order to sneak for himself a few pennies-in order to charm the golden birds out of the pockets of his Christianly beloved neighbours. He puts himself at the service of the other's most depraved fancies, plays the pimp between him and his need, excites in him morbid appetites, lies in wait for each of his weaknesses-all so that he can then demand the cash for this service of love. (Every product is a bait with which to seduce away the other's very being, his money; every real and possible need is a weakness which will lead the fly to the gluepot. General exploitation of communal human nature, just as every imperfection in man, is a bond with heaven-an avenue giving the priest access to his heart; every need is an opportunity to approach one's neighbour under the guise of the utmost amiability and to say to him: Dear friend, I give you what you need, but you know the conditio sine qua non; you know the ink in which you have to sign yourself over to me; in providing for your pleasure, I fleece you.) And partly, this estrangement manifests itself in that it produces refinement of needs and of their means on the one hand, and a bes tial barbarization, a complete, unrefined, abstract simplicity of need, on the other; or rather in that it merely resurrects itself in its oppo; site. Even the need for fresh air ceases for the worker. Man returns to living in a cave, which is now, however, contaminated with the mephitic breath of plague given off by civilization, and which h e continues to occupy only precariously, i t being for him a n alien hab itation which can be withdrawn from him any day-a place from which, if he does not pay, he can be thrown out any day. For this mortuary he has to pay. A dwelling in the light, which Prometheus in Aeschylus designated as one of the greatest boons, by means of which he made the savage into a human being, ceases to exist for the worker. Light, air, etc.-the simplest animal cleanliness-ceases to be a need for man. Dirt-this stagnation and putrefaction of man-the sewage of civilization (speaking quite literally) -comes to be the element of life for him. Utter, unnatural neglect, putre fied nature, comes to be his life-element. None of his senses exist any longer, and not only in his human fashion, but in an inhuman fashion, and therefore not even in an animal fashion. The crudest modes (and instruments) of human labour are coming back: the tread mill of the Roman slaves, for instance, is the means of produc tion, the means of existence, of many English workers. It is not only that man has no human needs-even his animal needs are ceasing to exist. The Irishman no longer knows any need now but
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the need to eat, and indeed only the need to eat potatoes-and scabby potatoes at that, the worst kind of potatoes. But in each of their industrial towns England and France have already a little Ire land. The savage and the animal have at least the need to hunt, to roam, etc.-the need of companionship. Machine labour is simpli fied in order to make a worker out of the human being still in the making, the completely immature human being, the child-whilst the worker has become a neglected child. The machine accommo dates itself to the wealmess of the human being in order to make the weak human being into a machine. How the multiplication of needs and of the means of their satis faction breeds the absence of needs and of means is demonstrated by the political economist (and the capitalist: it should be noted that it is always empirical business men we are talking about when we refer to political economists-their scientific confession and mode of being). This he shows: (1) By reducing the worker's need to the barest and most miser able level of physical subsistence, and by reducing his activity to the most abstract mechanical movement. Hence, he says: Man has no other need either of activity or of enjoyment. For he calls even this life human life and existence. ( 2) By counting the lowest possible level of life (existence) as the standard, indeed as the general standard-general because it is applicable to the mass of men. He changes the worker into an insensible being lacking all needs, just as he changes his activity into a pure abstraction from all activity. To him, therefore, every luxury of the worker seems to be reprehensible, and everything that goes beyond the most abstract need-be it in the realm of passive enjoyment, or a manifestation of activity-seems to him a luxury. Political economy, this science of wealth, is therefore simultane ously the science of denial, of want, of thrift, of saving-and it actually reaches the point where it spares man the need of either fresh air or physical exercise. This science of marvellous industry is simultaneously the science of asceticism, and its true ideal is the ascetic but extortionate miser and the ascetic but productive slave. Its moral ideal is the worker who takes part of his wages to the sav ings-bank, and it has even found ready-made an abject art in which to clothe this its pet idea: they have presented it, bathed in senti mentality, on the stage. Thus political economy-despite its w or ldly and wanton appearance-is a true moral science, the most moral of all the sciences. Self-denial, the denial of life and of all human needs, is its cardinal doctrine. The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance, hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save-the greater becomes your treasure which neither
96
i.
iL :,�
The Early Marx
moths nor dust will devour-your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life-the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power -all this it can appropriate for you-it can buy all this for you: it is the true endowment. Yet being all this, it is inclined to do noth ing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant. And when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore be sub merged in avarice. The worker may only have enough for him to want to live, and may only want to live in order to have [enough]. Of course a controversy now arises in the field of political econ omy. The one side (Lauderdale, Malthus, etc.) recommends luxury and execrates thrift. The other (Say, Ricardo, etc.) recommends thrift and execrates luxury. But the former admits that it wants luxury in order to produce labour (i.e., absolute thrift); and the latter admits that it recommends thrift in order to produce wealth (i.e., luxury). The Lauderdale-Malthus school has the romantic notion that avarice alone ought not to determine the consumption of the rich, and it contradicts its own laws in advancing extrava gance as a direct means of enrichment. Against it, therefore, the other side very earnestly and circumstantially proves that I do not increase but reduce my possessions by being extravagant. The Say Ricardo school, however, is hypocritical in not admitting that it is precisely whim and caprice which determine production. It forgets the "refined needs"; it forgets that there would be no production without consumption; it forgets that as a result of competition pro duction can only become more extensive and luxurious. It forgets that it is use that determines a thing's value, and that fashion deter mines use. It wishes to see only "useful things" produced, but it forgets that production of too many useful things produces too large a useless population. Both sides forget that extravagance and thrift, luxury and privation, wealth and poverty are equal. And you must not only stint the immediate ",ratification of your senses, as by stinting yourself of food, etc.: you must also spare yourself all sharing of general interest, all sympathy, all trust, etc.; if you want to be economical, if you do not want to be ruined by illu SlOns. You must make everything that is yours saleable, i.e., useful. If I ask the political economist: Do I obey economic laws if I extract money by offering my body for sale, by surrendering it to another's
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lust? ( The factory workers in France call the prostitution of their wives and daughters the xth working hour, which is literally cor rect. ) -Or am I not acting in keeping with political economy if I sell my friend to the Moroccans? ( And the direct sale of men in the form of a trade in conscripts, etc., takes place in all civilized coun tries. ) -Then the political economist replies to me: You do not transgress my laws; but see what Cousin Ethics and Cousin Reli gion have to say about it. My political economic ethics and religion have nothing to reproach you with, but- But whom am I now to believe, political economy or ethics? The ethics of political economy is ac q uisition, work, thrift, sobriety-but political economy promises to satisfy my needs. The political economy of ethics is the opulence of a good conscience, of virtue, etc.; but how can I live virtuously if I do not live? And how can I have a good conscience if I am not conscious of anything? It stems from the very nature of estrange ment that each sphere applies to me a different and opposite yard stick-ethics one and political economy another; for each is a spe cific estrangement of man and focuses attention on a particular round of estranged essential activity, and each stands in an estranged relation to the other. Thus M. Michel Chevalier re proaches Ricardo with having abstracted from e thics . But Ricardo is allowing political economy to speak its own language, and if it does not speak ethically, this is not Ricardo's fault. M. Chevalier abstracts from political economy in so far as he moralizes, but he really and necessarily abstracts from ethics in so far as he practises political economy . The reference of political economy to ethics, if it is other than an arbitrary, contingent and therefore unfounded and unscientific reference, if it is not being put up as a sham but is meant to be essential, can only be the reference of the laws of polit ical economy to ethics. If there is no such cOQnection, or if the con trary is rather the case, can Ricardo help it? Besides, the opposition between political economy and ethics is only a sham opposition and just as much no opposition as it is an opposition. All that happens is that political economy expresses moral laws in its own way. Needlessness as the principle of political economy is most bril liantly shown in its theory of population. There are too many people . Even the existence of men is a pure luxury; and if the worker is "ethical, " he will be sparing in procreation. ( Mill suggests public acclaim for those who prove themselves continent in their sexual relations, and public rebuke for those who sin against such barrenness of marriage . . . . Is not this the ethics, the teaching of asceticism?) The production of people appears in the form of public misery. The meaning which production has in relation to the rich is seen revealed in the meaning which it has for the poor. At the top the
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manifestation is always refined, veiled, ambiguous-a sham; lower, it is rough, straightforward, frank-the real thing. The worker's crude need is a far greater sOUrce of gain than the refined need of the rich . The cellar-dwellings in London bring more to those who let them than do the palaces; that is to say, with reference to the landlord they constitute greater wealth, and thus ( to speak the lan guage of political economy ) greater social wealth . Industry speculates on the refinement of needs, but it speculates just as much on their crudeness, but on their artificially produced crudeness, whose true enjoyment, therefore, is self-stupefaction this seeming satisfaction of need-this civilization contained within the crude barbarism of need; the English gin-shops are therefore the symbolical embodiments of private property. Their luxury reveals the true relation of industrial luxury and wealth to man. They are therefore rightly the only Sunday pleasures of the people, dealt with at least mildly by the English police. \Ve have already seen how the political economist establishes the unity of labour and capital in a variety of ways:-( 1 ) Capital is accumulated labour. ( 2 ) The purpose of capital within production -partly, reproduction of capital with profit, partly, capital as raw material ( material of labour) , and partly, as itself a working instru ment (the machine is capital directly equated with labour)-is pro ductive labour. ( 3 ) The worker is a capital. ( 4 ) \Vages belong to costs of capital . ( 5 ) In relation to the worker, labour is the reprod uction of his life-capital. ( 6 ) In relation to the capitalist, labour is an aspect of his capital's activity. Finally, ( 7 ) the political economist postulates the original unity of capital and labour in the form of the unity of the capitalist and the worker; this is the original state of paradise. The way in which these two aspects in the form of two persons leap at each other's throats is for the political economist a contingent event, and hence only to be explained by reference to external factors . (See Mill .) 4 The nations which are still dazzled by the sensuous splendour of precious metals, and are therefore still fetish-worshippers of metal money, are -not yet fully developed money-nations.-Contrast of France and England. The extent to which the solution of theoreti cal riddles is the task of practice and effected through practice, just as true practice is the condition of a real and positive theory, is shown, for example, in fetishism. The sensuous consciousness of the fetish-worshipper is different from that of the Greek, because his sensuous existence is still different. The abstract enmity between sense and spirit is necessary so long as the human feeling for nature, 4. James M i l l ,
Elements of Political Economy.
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the human sense of nature, and therefore also the natural sense of man, are not yet produced by man's own labour. Equality is nothing but a translation of the German "Ich=Ich" into the French, i.e., political form. Equality as the groundwork of communism is its political justification, and it is the same as when the German justifies it by conceiving man as universal self-con sciousness. Naturally, the transcendence of the estrangement always proceeds from that form of the estrangement which is the dominant power : in Germany, self-consciousness; in France, equality, because politics; in England, real, material, practical need taking only itself as its standard. It is from this standpoint that Proudhon is to be criticized and appreciated . If we characterize communism itself because of its character as negation of the negation, as the appropriation of the human essence which mediates itself with itself through the negation of private property-as being not yet the true, self-originating position but rather a position originating from private property, [ ] 5 Since i n that cases the real estrangement of the life of man remains, and remains all the more, the more one is conscious of it as such, it may be accomplished solely by putting communism into operation. ' In order to abolish the idea of private property, the idea of com munism is completely sufficient. It takes actual communist action to abolish actual private property. History will come to it; and this movement, which in theory we already know to be a self-transcend ing movement, will constitute in actual fact a very severe and pro tracted process . But we must regard it as a real advance to have gained beforehand a consciousness of the limited character as well as of the goal of this historical movement-and a consciousness . which reaches out beyond it. When communist workmen associate with one another, theory, propaganda, etc., is their first end . But at the same time, as a result of this association, they acquire a new need-the need for society -and what appears as a means becomes an end. You can observe this practical process in its most splendid results whenever you see French socialist workers together. Such things as smoking, drinking, eating, etc., are no longer means of contact or means that bring together. Company, association, and conversation, which again has society as its end, are enough for them; the brotherhood of man is .
S. I n the manuscript the lower left cor ner of the page i s torn off. Just the right-hand endings o f the last s i x lines remain, making restorations of the text impossible. It i s possible to surmise, however, that Marx here criticizes He gel's idealistic "transcending" o f es-
.
.
trangement ( th e words that have sur vived are cited in the next footnote ) . 6. In " t ranscending" estrangement " i n the old German manner-the manner of the Hegelian phenomenology," i . e . , i n transcending i t exclusively i n the "consciousness" of the subject.
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The Early Marx
no mere phrase with them, but a fact of l ife, a n d the nobility of m a n shines upon us from their work-h a rdened bodies . \Vhen political economy claims that demand a n d s upply always balance each oth er, it immediately forgets that according to its own claim ( theory of popul a t i on ) the supply of
people
always exceeds
the demand, and that, therefore, in the essential result of the whole p roduction p roce ss-the existence of man-the disparity between demand and supply gets its m os t striking expressio n . The extent to which money, which appears a s a means, consti tutes true
power
and the sale end-the extent to which in general
th a t means which gives m e substance, .w hich gives m e possession of th e objective s ubstance of others, is an
end in itself-can
b e clearly
seen from the facts th a t landed p roperty wherever land is the source of life, and
life,
horse
and
sword
wherever these are the
true means of
are also acknowledged as the true political powers in l i f e . In the
middle ages a soc i a l class is emancipated as soon as it is a l lowed to carry the
sword.
Amongst nomadic peoples it is the
horse
which
makes me a free m an and a participant in the life of the commun ity. \Ve have s a i d above that man is regressing to the
cave dwelling
etc.-but that he is regressing to it in an estranged, malignant form. The savage in h i s cave-a natural element w h i c h freely offers itself for his use and protection-feels h imsel f n o m o re a stranger, or rather feels h i mself to be j u s t as much at home as a
ftsh
in water.
B u t the cellar-dwe l l ing of the poor m a n i s a h o s ti l e dwelling, " a n alien, restraining p o w e r which o n l y gives itself up t o h im i n s o far a s h e gives up to it his bl ood a n d sweat"-a dwelling which he cannot look upon a s his own home where he might a t last exclaim,
I am at home," one else's h o use, in the " H e re
but where instead h e finds h i mself i n house of a
stranger
some
who daily lies in wait for
him and throws him out if he does not pay his rent. Simil a rly, he is also aware of the contrast i n quality between his dwelling and a h um a n dwelling-a residence in that
other
world, the heaven of
wealth. Estrangement is m anifested not only i n the fact that
my means someone else, that my desire is the inaccessi b l e pos session of another, but also in the fact that everything is in itself something different from itself-th a t my activity is something else of life belong to
a n d that, finally ( a n d this applies also to the capitalist ) , all i s under the sway of
inhuman
power. There is a form of inactive, extrava
gant wealth given over wholly to pleasu.r e , the enjoyer of which o n the one hand
behaves
as a mere
ephemeral
individual frantically
spending h i m s el f to no p u rpose knows the slave-labour of others ( hu m a n
sweat and blood )
a s the p rey of his c u p i d i ty, and therefore
knows man h i m s elf, and hence also his own self, as a sacrificed a n d e m p t y b e i n g . \Vith such wealth t h e contempt of m a n makes its appearance, p a rtly as arrogance a n d as t h e throwing-away of what
Economi c and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1 8 44
101
can give s ustenance t o a h undred h uman l i ves, and partly as the infamous illusion that his own un bridled extravagance and ceasel ess, unproductive consumption is the condition of the other's
labour subsistence . He knows the realization of the
and therefore of his
essential powers of man only as the realization of his own excesses, hi s whims and capricious, bizarre notions. This wealth which, o n the other h and, again knows wealth a s a mere means, as something that is good for noth i ng b u t to be annihilated and which is therefore a t o n c e s l a v e and master, a t once generous a n d mean, capricious, pre s umptuous, conceited, refined, cultured and witty-this wealth h a s n o t y e t experienced
wealth a s a n utterly alien p ower over itsel f : i t grati
s e e s i n i t , rather, only i t s o w n power, a n d n o t wealth b u t
fication [is its F final aim and e n d . *
*
*
Society, as it appears to the political economist, is civil society, in which every individual is
a
totality of needs a n d only exists for the
other person, as the other exists for him, i n s o far as each becomes
a
means for the other. The political economist reduces everything ( j ust as does politics i n its
Rights of Man ) to man, i . e . , to the i n di
vidual whom he strips of all determinateness capitalist or worker.
so
as to cla s s h i m as
The
division of labour is the expression in political economy of social character of labour within the estrangement. Or, since labour i s only a n � xpression of h uman activity within alienation, of the living of life a s the a lienating of l ife, the division of labour, too, is therefore nothing else but the estranged, alienated positing of h uman activity a s a real activity of the species or as activity of man as a species being. As for the essence of the division of l a bou r - a n d of c o u rse the the
divi s i o n of labour had to be conceived as a major driving force in the p roduction o f wealth as soon as
labour was recognized a s the essence of private property-i.e., about the estranged and alienated form of human activity as an activity of the species- the political economists are very unclear and self-contradictory about it. * * *
The Power of Money in Bourgeo is S ociety I f m a n 's
feelings, p a ssions, etc., are n o t merely anthropological ontological affirma
phenomena in the [narrower] 8 sense, but truly
tions o-f essential being ( of nature ) , a n d i f they are onl y really
a ffi rmed beca u s e their
object exists for them as an object of sense,
then it i s clea r : 7 . The bottom of the page i s Three or four lines are m i ssing.
torn.
8. This word i s illegible.
1 02 (1)
The Early Marx That they have by no means merely one mode of affirma
tion, but rather that the distinctive character of their existence, o f their life, is constituted b y t h e distinctive mode of t h e i r affi rmatio n . I n what manner t h e object exists f o r them, i s t h e characteristic mode of their
(2)
gratification.
Whenever the sensuous affirmation is the d i r e c t a n n u l m e n t
o f the object in its independent form ( a s i n eating, drinking, work ing up of the ob ject, etc . ) , this is the affirmation of the obj ect.
( 3)
I n so far as m a n , a n d hence also his feeling, etc . , a r e
human,
the affirmation of the object by another is l ikewise his own enjoy· m en t .
(4)
Only through developed i n d u s try-i . e . , through t h e medium
of private property-does the ontological essence cif h u m a n passion come to be both in its totality a n d in its h u m a n i ty; the science of man is therefore itself a product of man's establishm ent of himself by practical activity.
(5)
The
meaning
estrangement-is the
of
private
property-liberated
existence of essential objects for
from
its
m a n , both as
objects of enjoyment and as objects of activity. By possessing the
property
of buying everything, by possessing
the property of appropriating all objects,
money
is thus the
object
of eminent possession . The universality of its property is the omnipotence of its being. I t therefore functions as the almighty being. Money is the
pimp
between man's need and th e object,
between his life and his means of life. But that which mediates
my
life for me, also
For
me it i s the
mediates other pers o n .
the existence of other people
for me.
" W h a t , man ! confound i t , h a n d s a n d feet And head and backside, all are yours ! And what we take while life is sweet, Is that to be declared not ours? Six stallions, say, I can afford, Is not their strength my property? I tear along, a sporting lord, As if their legs belonged to m e . " ( Mephistopheles, i n Faust ) 9 Shakespeare in
Timon of Athens :
" Gol d ? Yellow, glittering, precious gold? No, Gods, I a m n o idle votarist! . . . Thus much of this will make black white, foul fair, \Vrong right, base noble, old young, coward valiant . . . . Why, this \Vi l l l u g your priests a n d servants from your s i des, Pluck stout m en ' s pillows from below their heads : 9. Goethe, Faust, ( Part I-Faust's Study, III ) , translated b y Philip Wayne
(Penguin, 1 9 4 9 ) , p. 9 1 .
1 03
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 This y ellow slave \Vill knit and break religions, bless the accursed; Make the hoar l eprosy adored, place thieves And give them title, knee a n d approbation With senators on the bench : This is it That makes the wappen'd widow wed again; She, whom the spital-h ouse a n d ulcerous sores \Vould cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices To the April day again . . . . Damned earth, Thou common whore of mankind, that putt'st odds Among the rout of natio n s . " ! A n d a l s o later :
"0 thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce Twixt natural son and sire ! thou bright defiler Of Hymen's purest bed ! thou valiant Mars ! Thou ever young, fresh, loved and delicate wooer, Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow That lies on Dian's lap! Thou visible God! T h a t solder'st close impossibilities, And m a k ' s t them kis s ! T h a t speak'st with every tongue, To every purpose! 0 thou touch of hea rts ! Think thy slave man rebels, a n d b y thy virtue Set them into confounding odds, that beasts May h ave t h e world i n empire ! " 2 Shakespeare excel lently depicts the real nature o f
money.
To
understand him, let u s begin, first of all, by expounding the passage from Goeth e . That which is f o r m e through t h e m e d i u m o f
m
o ney
-
that for
I can pay ( i .e . , which money can b uy ) -that a m I, the pos
which
sessor of the money. The extent of the power of money is the extent of my p o wer. Money's properties a re m y properties and essential powers-the properties and powers o f its possessor. Thus, what
I am and am capable of is b y no means determined by my
I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beauti ful of wome n . Therefore I am n o t ugly, for the effect of ugli ness its deterrent power-is n u llified by money. I, in my character as an , individual, a m lame, but money furnishes me with twenty four feet . Therefore I a m not l a m e . I am b a d , dishonest, u nscrupu individuality. -
lous, stupid; but money is honoured, and therefore so is its posses sor. Money is the supreme good, therefore i t s possessor is goo d . Money, besides, saves me t h e trouble of b e i n g dishones t : I am therefore presumed honest.
mind
I am stupid, b u t money is the real
of all things and how then should its possessor b e stupid?
Besides, he can b uy talented people for himself, and i s h e who has 1. Shakespeare, Timon of A thens, A c t 4 , Scene 3 . M a r x quotes the Schl egel-Tieck German translation. ( Ma r x ' s emphasis . ) 2 . Ibid.
1 04
The Early Marx
power over the talented n o t more talented than the talented? D o not I , w h o thanks to money a m capable o f
all t h a t t h e human
heart longs for, possess a l l human capacities? D o es n o t m y money therefore transform all my incapacities into their contrary? If
money is the bond binding me to human life, binding society
to me, binding me and nature and man, is n o t money the bond of all
bonds? Can it not dissolve and bind all ties? Is it not , therefore, agent of divorce? It is the true agent of divorce as well as the true binding agen t the [universalJ 3 galvano-chemical
the universal
-
power o f Society. Shakespeare stresses especially two properties of mo ney : ( 1 ) I t i s the visible divinity-the transformation o f all h uman and natural properties into their contraries, the universal confound ing and overturning of things : it makes brothers o f impossibilities . (2)
It is the common whore, the common p im p of people a n d
nations . The overturning and confounding of all human and natural qual ities,
the fraternization of impossibilities-the
divine power of character as m e n 's estranged, alienating and self-disposing species-nature. Money is the alienated ability of man kind. That which I am unable to do as a man, and of which therefore all m y individual essential powers are incapable, I am able to do by means of money. Money thus turns each o f these powers into something which i n itself it is not-turns it, that is, into its con trary. m on ey-lies i n its
If I long for a particular dish or want to take the mail-coach because I am not strong enough t o go by foot, money fetches me the dish and the mail-coach : that is, it converts my wishes from som ething in the realm of imagination, translates them from their meditated, imagined o r willed existence into their
sensuous, actual
existence-from imagination to li fe, from imagined being into real being.
In
effecting
this mediation, money
is
the
truly creative
power. No doubt
demand also exists for h i m who h a s no money, but his
demand is a mere thing o f the imagination without effect or exist ence for me, for a third party, for the others, and which therefore remains
for m e
unreal and objectless. The difference between
effective deman d based on money and ineffective demand based on m y need, m y passion, m y wish, etc., is the difference between
bein g thinking, between the imagined which exists merely within m e a n d t h e imagined as i t is f o r m e outside me as a real object. and
If I have n o m o ney for travel, I have no need-tha t is, no real and self-realizing need-to travel. If
I have the vocation for study
3 . An end o f the page i s torn out o f the manuscript.
105
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 but n o m o n e y f o r it, I have no
e ffective,
no
vocation for stu dy-tha t is, no
vocation . On t h e other h a n d ,
true
vocation f o r s t u d y b u t h a v e the will
and
If I have really no it, I have
t h e money f o r
a n effective vocation for it. Being the external, common medium an d faculty for turning an image into reality and reality into a mere
image
(a faculty not springing from man as man or from h uman
s ociety as society ) , money transforms the real essential powers of man and nature into what are m erely abstract conceits and there fore
imperfec t ions -into
tormenting
chimeras-just
as i t
trans
fo rms real imperfections and chimeras-essential powers which are really impotent, which exist only i n the imagination of the in divid ual-into
real powers
and
faculties.
In the light of this characteristic alone, money is thus the gen eral overturning of
individualities
which turns them into their con
trary and adds contradictory attributes to their attributes . Money, then, appears as this
overturning
power both against the
individual and against the bonds of society, etc., which claim to be
essences
in themselves . It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into
hate, hate into l ove, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, serva n t into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence a n d intelligence into idiocy. Since money, a s the existing and active concept o f value, con founds and exchanges all things, it is the general
co mpounding
confounding
and
of a l l things-the w o r l d upside-dawn-the confound
ing a n d compounding of all natural a n d human qualities. He who can buy bravery is brave, though a coward. As money is not exchanged for any one specific quality, for any one specific thing, o r for any particu l a r h u m a n essential power, but for the entire objective world of man and nature, from the s tandpoint of its p ossessor i t therefore serves to exchange every prop erty for every other, even contradictory, property and objec t : it is the fraterniza tion of im possibili ties. I t makes contradictions embrace. Assume
man
to be
man
and his relationship to the world to be
a h uman one : then you can exchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc. I f you want to en j oy art, you m u s t be an artistically cultivated person; if you want to exercise influence over other people, you m u st b e a person with a stimulating and encouragin g effect on other people. Every one of your relations to man a n d t o nature must be a
specific expression, corresponding t o t h e object 6f individual life . If you love without evoking
your will, of your real
love i n return-that is, if your loving as loving does not produce reciprocal love;
if through a living expression of yourself as a loving
person you d o not make yourself a ' impotent-a m i s for tune.
lo ved person,
then your love is
1 06
The Early Marx
Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a \Vhole ( 6 ) This is
pe r h ap s
th e
p la ce at which, by way of explaining a n d
j ust ify i n g the ideas here presented, we might offer some considera
tio ns in regard to the Hegelian dialectic generally and especially its e x position in the Phenomenology and Logic, and also, lastly, the relation to it of the modern critical movement. So pow er ful was modern German criticism's preoccupation with the past-so completely was it possessed in its deve lopme n t by its subject-matter-tha t there preva iled a completely uncritical atti tude to the method of criticizing, together with a complete lack of aw are n e ss about the seemingly formal, bu t really vital question : how do we now stand as regards the Hegelian dialectic? This lack of awareness about the relationship o f modern criticism to the Hegelian philosophy as a whole and especially to the Hegelian dialectic has been so great that critics like Strauss and Bruno Bauer s t ill remain wholly within the confines o f the Hegelian Logic; the former completely so and the latter a t lea s t im plicitly s o in h i s Synoptics4 (where, in opposition t o Str a u s s , h e replaces the sub stance of "abstract nature" by the "sel f-consciousness" of abstr a c t man ) a nd even in Christianity Discovered.5 Thus i n Christianity Discovered, for example, you get : "As th ough i n po sit ing the world, self-consciousness pos i t s that which is d i ffer e n t from itsel f , and in what it p os its it posits it sel f , because it in t u r n annuls the difference between what it has posited and itself, inasmuch as it itself has being only in the po s iti n g and .the move m ent . - H ow th en can it not have its pur pose in th is movement? " etc.; or a g a i n : "They" ( th e French ma te r i a li sts ) "have not yet been able to see that i t is only as the movement o f self-consciousness that the movement of the uni verse has actually come to be for itself, a n d achieved u n ity with itsel f ."
Such ex p re ss io ns do not even show any verbal divergen ce from the HegelIan app r o a ch , but o n the co n tra ry, repeat it word for word. Ho� little consciou sness there was in r el a t ion to the Hegelian . dialectIc du n.ng the act of criticism ( B a u e r, The Synoptics ) , and 4 . B r u n o Bauer, Kritik der e vangeli schen Geschichte de,. Synoptiker (Cri tique of the Synoptic Gospels ) , vol. 1 - 2 , Leipzig, 1 84 1 ; vol. 3 , B r a un s c h w e i g , 1 8 4 2 . In religious literature the ' authors o f the first three Gospels are known as the Synoptics. 5. B r u n o Bauer, D a s Entdeckte Chris-
tentum. Eine Erinnerung des A chtzehn ten J ah,.hundert und eine Beitrag zur Krisis des N eunzehnten ( Christianity Discovered: A Memorial 0/ the Eight eenth Century and a Contribution to the Crisis 0 / the Nineteenth ) , Zii rich and W interthur, 1 8 4 3 .
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
1 07
l i t tle this consciousness came into being even after the act of m a terial criticism is proved by Bauer when, in his
Free dom, 6
The Good of
he dismisses the brash question put by Herr Gruppe
.. '.' What abou t logic now? "-by referring him to future critics . B ut even now-now that and, in detail, in
Anecdotis
Feuerbach b o th in his Theses The Philosophy of the Future,
in the h as i n
p rinciple overthrown t h e o l d dialectic and philosophy; n o w that tha t school of criticism, on the other hand, which was incapable of acc omplishing this has all the same seen it accomplished and h as pro claimed itself pure, resol ute, absolute criticism-criticism that ha s come into the clear with itself; now that this criticism, in its spi ritual pride, has reduced the whole process of history to the rela tion between the rest of the world and itself ( th e rest of the world, in contrast to itself, falling under the category of "the m a sses" ) and
dissolved all
dogmatic antithesis into
the
single
dogmatic
antithesis of its own cleverness and the stupidity of the world-the antithesis of the critical Christ and Mankind, the
rabble;
now that
daily and h ourly i t has demonstrated its own excellence against the dullness of the ' masses; now, finally, that i t has procl a imed the criti cal
Last Judgement
in the shape of an a n n o uncement th a t the day
is approaching when the whole o f expiring humanity will assemble before i t a n d be sorted by i t into groups, each particular mob receiving its testimonium paupertatis;7 now that it has made known in printS its superiority to h u m a n feelings as well as its superiority to the world, over which it s its enthroned i n sublime solitude, only letting -fall from time to time from its sarcastic lips the ringing laughter o f the Olympian Gods-even now, after all these delightful antics of moribund idealism i n the guise of criticism ( i . e . , of Young-Hegeliani sm ) -even n ow i t has not expressed the suspicion that the time was ripe for a critical settling of accounts with
the
tic-and
mother even
h ad
of
Young-Hegelianism-the
[nothing]
to say
about
Hegelian
dialec
its critical attitude
towards the Feuerbachian dialectic. C riticism with a completely uncritical attitude to itsel f ! Feuerbach is t h e only o n e w h o h a s a serious, critical attitude t o the Hegelian dialectic a n d w h o h a s m a d e genuine discoveries in t h i s fiel d . He i s i n f a c t the t r u e conqueror of the old philosophy. T e extent of his achievement, and the unpretentious simplicity WIth which he, Feuerbach, gives it to the world, stand in striking contrast to the reverse.
�
Feuerbach 's great achievement is : ( 1 ) The proof that philosophy is nothing else but religion ren dered into thoughts a n d thinking expounded, and that it has there6.
Bruno Bauer, Die Gute Sache der Freiheit und meine Eigene A ngelegen heit ( Th e Good of Freedom and My Own A ffair ) , ZUrich and Winterthur,
1 8 4 2. 7. Certificate of poverty. 8 . A reference to the Allgemeine Literatur Zeitung.
1 08
The Early Marx
fore likewise to be condemned as another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; ( 2 ) The establishment of true materialism and of real science, since Feuerbach also makes the social relationship "of man to man" the basic principle of the theory; ( 3) His opposing to the negation of the negation, which claims to be the absolute positive, the self-supporting positive, positively grounded on itself. Feuerbach explains the Hegelian dialectic (and thereby justifies starting out from the positive, from sense-certainty) as follows : Hegel sets out from the estrangement of Substance ( in Logic, from the Infinite, the abstractly universal ) -from the absolute and fixed abstraction; which means, put popularly, that he sets out from religion and theology. Secondly, he annuls the infinite, and establishes the actual, sen suous, real, finite, particular ( philosophy-annulment of religion and theology ) . Thirdly, he again annuls the positive and restores the abstrac tion, the infinite-restoration of religion and theology. Feuerbach thus conceives the negation of the negation only as a contradiction of philosophy with itself-as the philosophy which affirms theology ( the transcendent, etc. ) after having denied it, and w hich it therefore affirms in opposition to itself. The position or self-affirmation a n d self-confirmation contained in the negation of the negation is taken to be a position which is not yet sure of itself, which is therefore burdened with its opposite, which is doubtful of itself and therefore in need of proof, and which, therefore, is not a position establishing itself by its exist ence-not a position that justifies itself; hence it is directly and immediately confronted by the self-grounded position of sense certainty 9 But because Hegel has conceived the negation of the negation from the point of view of the positive relation inherent in it as the true and only positive, and from the point of view of the negative relation inherent in it as the only true act and self-realizing act of all being, he has only found the abstract, logical, speculative expres sion for the movement of history; and this historical process is not yet the real history of man-of man as a given subject, but only man's act of genesis-the story of man's origin: We shall explain both the abstract form of this process , and the difference between this process as it is in Hegel in contrast to modern criticism, that is, in contrast to the same process in Feuerbach's Wesen des Chris tentums ( Essence of Christianity ) , or rather the critical form of this in Hegel still uncritical process. .
9. Feuerbach views negation
of nega tion, the definite concept as thinking surpassing itself i n thinking a n d as thinking wanting to b e directly aware-
ness, nature, reality. [ Mar:l:] Marx is referring to Feuerbach's critical obser vations about Hegel i n § 2 9-30 of his Grundsiitze der Philosophie zer Zukunft.
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
1 09
Let us take a look at the Hegelian system. One must begin with Hegel's Phenomenology, the true point of origin and the secret of the Hegelian philosophy. PHENOl\JENOLOGYl
A. Self-Consciousness I. Consciousness. ( a ) Certainty at the level of sense experience; or the "This" and Meaning. ( b ) Perception, or the Thing with Its Properties, and Deception. ( c ) Force and Understanding, Appear ance and the Super-sensible \\'orld. II . Self-Consciousness. The Truth of Certainty of Self. ( a ) Inde pendence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness; Lordship and Bondage. ( b ) Freedom of Self·Consciousness : Stoicism, Scepticism, the Unhappy Consciousness . III. Reason. Reason's Certainty and Reason's Truth . ( a ) Obser vation as a Process of Reason. Observation of Nature and of Self Consciousness. ( b ) Realization of Rational Self·Consciousness through its own Activity. Pleasure and Necessity. The Law of the Heart and the Frenzy of Self-Conceit. Virtue and the Course of the \Varld. ( c ) The Individuality \Vhich is Real In and For Itself. The Spiritual Animal Kingdom and the Deception, or the Real Fact. Reason as Lawgiver. Reason \Vhich Tests Laws. B. Mind 1. True Mind; the Ethical Order.
I I . Mind in Self-Estrangement-Culture. I I I . Mind Certain of Itself, Morality.
C. Religion Natural Religion; Religion in the Form of Art; Revealed Reli gion. D. Absolute Knowledge Hegel's Encyclopaedia,2 beginning as it does with Logic, with pure speculative thought, and ending with Absolute Knowl1 . What follows here are the main chapter a n d section-headings o f Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind. Here and i n l a t e r quotations f rom t h e Phenomenol ogy, the translator has followed B ail l i e ' s translation very closely, departing from i t only on the few occasions w here this was necessary to keep the terminology i n line with that used throughout the present volume. 2. G . W . F . Hegel, Enzyklopiidie der Philosophischen Wissenschaften ( H ei delberg, 1 s t ed., 1 8 1 7 , 3 rd ed., 1 8 3 0 ) .
Hegel's Encyclopaedia o f the Philo sophical Sciences is a single volume falling i n t o three main parts : the sub ject of the first i s Logic (d. The Logic o f Hegel, trans. William Wallace. 2 n d e d . , Oxford, 1 8 9 2 ) ; the subject of the second part is the Philosophy of Na ture (of which no English translation has been published) , a n d that o f the third . the Philosophy o f M i n d . (eL He gel's Philosophy of Mind, trans. Wil l i a m Wal lace, Oxford, 1 8 9 4 . )
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The Early Marx
edge-with the self-conscious, self-comprehen ding, philosophic or absolute (i .e. , s uperh uman) abstract mind-is in its entirety nothing but the display, the self-objectificat ion, of the essence of the philosophic mind, and the philosophic mind is nothing but the estranged mind of the world thinking within its self estrangement-i .e., comprehendin g itself abstractly. Logic ( mind's coin of the realm, the speculative or thought-value of man and nature-their essence grown totally indifferent to all real determi nateness, and hence their unreal essence) is alienated thinking, and therefore thinking which abstracts from nature and from real man: abstract thinking. Then: The externality of this abstract thinking .. . nature, as it is for this abstract thinking. Nature is external to it-its self-loss; and it apprehends nature also in an external fash ion, as abstract thinking-but as alienated abstract thinking. Finally, Mind, this thinking returning home to its own point of ori gin-the thinking which, as the anthropologica l, phenomenolog i cal, psychological, ethical, artistic and religious mind, is not valid for itself, until ultimately it finds itself, and relates itself to itself, as absolute knowledge in the hence absolute, i . e . , abstract mind, and so receives its conscious embodiment in a mode of being corre sponding to it. For its real mode of being is abstraction. There is a double error in Hegel. The first emerges most clearly in the Phenomenology, the Hege lian philosophy's place of origin. When, for instance, wealth, state-power, etc., are understood by Hegel as entities estranged from the human being, this only happens in their form as thoughts . . .. They are thought-entities, and therefore merely a n estrangement of pure, i . e ., abstract, philosophical thinking. The whole process therefore e nds with Absolute Knowledge. It is pre cisely abstract thought from which these objects are estranged and which they confront with their arrogation of reality. The p hiloso pher sets up himself (that is, one who is himself an abstract form of estranged man) as the measuring-rod of the estranged world. The whole history of the alienation-process and the whole process of the retraction of the alienation is therefore nothing but the his tory of the production of abstract (i .e., absolute) thought-of logi cal, speculative th ough t . The estrangement, which therefore forms the real interest of this alienation and of the transcendence of this alienation, is the opposition of in itself and fo r itself, of conscious ness and self-consciousness, of object and s ubject th a t is to say, .it is the opposition, within thought itself, between abstract thinking and sensuous reality or real sensuousness. All other oppositions a n d mov·ements o f these oppositions are b u t t h e semblance, t h e cloak, the exoteric shape of these oppositions which alone ma tter, and which constitute the meaning of these other, profane oppositions. It is not the fact that the human being objectifies himself inhumanly, -
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in opposition to himself, but the fact that he o bjectifies himself in distinction from and in opposition to abstract thinking, that is the posited essence of the estrangement and the thing to be superseded. The appropriation of man's essential powers, which have become objects-indeed, alien objects-is thus in the first place only an appropriation occurring in consciousness, in pure thought-i.e., in abstraction: it is the appropriation of these objects as thoughts and as movements of thought. Consequently, despite its thoroughly n egative and critical appearance and despite the criticism really contained in it, which often anticipates far later development, there is already latent in the Phenomenology as a germ, a potentiality, a secret, the uncritical positivism and the equally uncritical idealism of Hegel's later works-that philosophic dissolution and restoration of the existing empirical world. In the second place: the vindica tion of the objective world for man-for example, the realization that sensuous consciousness is not an abstractly sensuous conscious ness but a humanly sensuous consciousness-that religion, wealth, etc., are but the estranged world of human objectification, of man's essential powers given over to work and that they are therefore but the path to the true human world-this appropriation or the insight into this process consequently appears in Hegel in this form, that sense, religion, state-power, etc., are spiritual entities; for only mind is the true essence of man, and the true form of mind is thinking mind, the logical, speculative min d. The humanness of nature and of the nature begotten by history-the humanness of man's products-appears in the form that they are products of abstract mind and as such, therefore, phases of mind-thought entities. The Phenomenology is, therefore, an occult critique-still to itself obscure and mystifying criticism; but inasmuch as it keeps steadily in view man's estrangement, even though man appears only in the shape of mind, there lie concealed in it all the elements of criticism, already prepared and elaborated in a manner often rising far above the Hegelian standpoint. The "Unhappy Consciousness," the "Honest Consciousness," the struggle of the "Noble and Base Consciousness, "s etc., etc .,-these separate sections contain, but still in .an estranged form, the critical elements of whole spheres such as religion, the state, civil life, etc. Just as entities, objects, appear as thought-entities, so the subject is always consciousness or self-consciousness; or rather the object appears only as abstract consciousness, man only as self-conscious71£ss: the distinct forms of estrangement which make their a ppearance are, therefore, only various forms of consciousness and self-consciousness. Just as in itself abstract consciousness ( the form in which the object is con3. "The unh a p py consciousness," etc.-forms of mind, and p h a s e s and factors in human history, distinguished
and a n alysed in particular sections of Hegel's Phenomenology.
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The Early Marx
ceived) is merely a moment of distinction of self-consciousness, wh at appears as the result of the movement is the identity of self consciousness with consciousness-absolute knowledge-the move ment of abstract thought no longer directed outwards but going on now oniy within its own self: that is to say, the dialectic of pure thought is the result. The outstanding thing in Hegel's Phenomenology and its final outcome-that is, the dialectic of negativity as the moving and generating principle-is thus first that Hegel conceives the self genesis of man as a process, conceives objectification as l oss of the object, as alienation and as transcendence of this alienation; that he thus grasps the essence of labour and comprehends objective man-true, because real man-as the outcome of man's own labour. The real, active orientation of man to himself as a species being, or his manifestation as a real species being ( i.e., as a human being ) , is only possible by his really bringing out of himself all the powers that are his as the species man-somet hing which in turn is only possi ble through the totality of man's actions, as the result of histo ry-is only possible by man's treating these generic powers as objects: and this, to begin with, is again only possible in the form of estrangement. We shall now demonstrate in detail Hegel's one-sidedness and limitations as they are displayed in the final chapter of the Pheno menology, "Absolute Knowledge"-a chapter which contains the concentrated spirit of the Phenomenology, the relationship of the Phenomenology to speculative dialectic, and also Hegel 's consciolls ness concerning both and their relationship to one anoth er. Let us provisionally say just this much in advance: Hegel's stand point is that of modern political economy. He grasps labour as the essence of man-as man's essence in the act of proving itself: he ' sees o n ly the positive, not the negative side of labour. Labour is m a n 's coming-to-be for himself within alienation, or as alienated man. The only labour which Hegel knows and recognizes is abstractly mental labour. Therefore, that which constitutes the essence of philosophy-the alienation of man in his knowing of himself, or alienated science thinking itsel f-Hegel grasps as its essence; and he is therefore able vis-a.-vis preceding philosophy to gather together its separate elements and phases, and to present his philosophy as the philosophy. \Vhat the other philosophers did that they grasped separate phases of nature and of h uman life as phases of self-consciousness, and indeed of abstract self-conscious ness-is known to Hegel as the doings of philosophy. H ence his science is absolute . Let us now tum to our subject. Absolute Knowledge. The last chapter of the "Phenomenology." The main point is that the object of consciousness is nothing else b ut self-consciousness, or that the object is only o bjectified
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se lf-consciousness-self-consciousness as object . ( Positing o f man=self-consciousness . ) The issue, therefore, is t o surmount t h e object of consciousness. Objectivity as such is regarded as an estranged human relationship which does not correspond to the essence of man, to self consciousness. The re-appropriation of the objective essence of man, begotten in the form of estrangement as something alien, has the meaning therefore not only to an nul estrangement, b ut objec tivity as wel l . Man, that is to say, is regarded as a non-objective, spiritual being. The movement of surmounting the object of consciousness is n o w described by Hegel in the following way: The object reveals itself not merely as returning into the self-for Hegel that is the one-sided way of apprehending this movement, the grasping of only one s ide. Man is posited as equiva lent to self. The self, however, is only the abstractly conceived man-man begotten by abstraction . Man is egotistic . His eye, his ear, etc. , are egotistic. In him every one of his essential powers h as the quality of selfhood. But it is quite false to say an that account "Self-consciousness has eyes, ears, essential powers." Self-conscious ness is rather a quality of h uman nature, of the human eye, e tc.; it i s not h uman nature that i s a quality of self-consciousness. The self-abstracted and fixed for itself is man as abstract egoist egoism raised in its pure abstraction to the level of though t . ( We shall return to this point later.) For Hegel the essence of man-man-equals self-consciousness. All estrangement of the human essence is therefore nothing but estrangement of self-consciousness. The estrangement of self consciousness is not regarded as an expression of the real estrange ment of the human being-its expression reflected in the realm of knowledge and thought. Instead, the real estrangement- that which appears real-is from its innermost, hidden nature ( a nature only brough t to light by philosoph y) nothing but the manifestation of the estrangement of the real essence of man, of self consciousness. The science which comprehends this is therefore called Phenomenology_ All re-appropriation of the estranged objec" tive essence appears, therefore, as a process of incorporation into self-consciousnes s : The man who takes hold of his essential being is merely th e self-consciousness which takes h ol d of objective essences . Return of the objec t into the self is therefore the re-appropriation of the object. The surmounting of the object of consciousness, comprehen sively expressed, means: 4 ( 1) That the object as such presents itself to consciousness as
4. The paragraph which
follows is a transcript of the s e c o n d and th ird paragraphs of the l ast chapter of Hegel's
Phenomenology, trans. Bail lie, 2nd ed., p. 789.
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The Early .Marx
something vanishing. (2) That it is the alienation of self consciousness which establishes thinghood. (3) That this externali· zation5 of seH-consciousness has not merely a negative but a posi tive significa nce. (4) That it has this meaning not merely for us or intrinsically, but for self-consciousness itself. ( 5) For self-con sciousness, the negative of the object, its annullin� of itself, has positive significance-self-consciousness knows this nullity of the object-because self-consciousness itself alienates itself; for in this alienation it establishes itself as object, or, for the sake of the indivisible unity of being-for-self, establishes the ob ject as itself. (6 ) On the other hand, there is also this other moment in the process, that self-consciousness has also just as much annulled and superseded this alienation and objectivity and resumed them into itself, being thus at home with itself in its other-being as such. (7) This is the movement of consciousness and in this movement con· sciousness is the totality of its moments. (8) Consciousness must similarly have taken up a relation to the object in all its aspects and phases, and have comprehended it from the point of view of each of them . This totality of its determinate characteristics makes the object intrinsically a spiritual being; and it becomes so in truth for consciousness through the apprehending of each· single one of them as self or through what was called above the spiritual attitude to them. As to (1): That the object as such presents itself to conscious ness as something vanishing-this is the above-mentioned return of
the object into the self. As to (2): The alienation of self-consciousness establishes thing. hood. Because man equals self-consciousn ess, his alienated, objec tive essence, or thinghood, equals alienated self-consciousness, and thinghood is th us established through this alienation (thinghood being that which is an object for man' and an object for him is
really only that which is to him an essential object, therefore his objective essence. And since it is not real Man, nor therefore Nature-Man being human Nature -who as such is made the subject, but only the abstraction of man-self-consc ious ness-thinghoo d cannot be anything but alienated self-con ciousness ) . It is only to be expected that a living, natural being equipped and endowed with objective (i .e., material) essential powers should have real natural objects of his essence; as is the fact that his self-alienation should lead to the establishing of a real, objective world-but a world in the form of externality-a world, therefore, not belonging to his own essential being, and an over powering worl d. There is nothing incomprehensible or mysterious in this. It would be mysterious, rather, if it were otherwise. But it is equally clear that a self-consciousness can only establish thinghood s. "Externalization"-Entausserung.
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through its alienation-i.e., establish something which itself is only an abstract thing, a thing of abstraction and not a real thing. It is clear, further, that thinghood is therefore utterly without any inde pendence, any essentiality vis-a-vis self-consciousness; that on the contrary, it is a mere creature-something posited by self-conscious ness. And what is posited, instead of confirming itself, is but a con firmation of the act of positing in which is concentrated for a moment the energy of the act as its product, seeming to give the de-posit-but only for a moment-the character of an inde pendent, real substance.1I Whenever real, corporeal man, man with his feet firmly on the solid ground, man exhaling and inhaling all the forces of nature, establishes his real, objective essential powers as alien objects by his externalization, it is not the act of positing which is the subject in this process: it is the subjectivity of objective essential powers. whose action, therefore, must also be something obfective_ A being who is objective acts objectively, and he would not act objectively if the objective did not reside in the very nature of his being. He cre ates or establishes only objects, because he is established by objects-because at bottom he is nature. In the act of establishing, therefore, this objective being does not fall from his state of "pure activity" into a creating of the object; on the contrary, his objective product only confirms his objective activity, establishing his activity as the activity of an objective, natural being. Here we see how consistent naturalism or humanism distin guishes itself both from idealism and materialism, constituting at the same time the unifying truth of both. vVe see also how only naturalism is capable of comprehending the act of world history. Man is directly a natural being. As a natural being and as a living natural being he is on the one hand furnished with natural p owers of life-he is an active natural being. These forces exist in him as tendencies and abilities-as impulses. On the other hand, as a natural, corporeal, sensuous, objective being he is a suffering, con ditioned and limited creature, like animals and plants. That is to say, the objects of his impulses exist outside him, as objects inde-' pendent of him; yet these objects are objects of his need-essential objects, indispensable to the manifestation and confirmation of his essential powers. To say that man is a corporeal, living, real, sen suous, objective being full of natural vigour is to say that he has real, sensuous, objects as the objects of his being or of h is life, or that he can only express his life in real, sensuous objects. To be objective, natural and sensuous, and at the same time to have object, nature and sense outside oneself, or oneself to be object, nature and sense for a third party, is one and the same thing. Hunger is a natural need; it therefore needs a nature outside itself, 6. "Su bstance"-Wesen.
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The Early Marx
an object outside itself, in order to satisfy itself, to be stilled. Hunger is a n acknowledged need of m y body for an object existing outside it, indispensable to its integration and to the expression of its essential being. The sun is the object of the plant-an indispen sable object to it, confirming its life-just as the pla nt is an object of the sun, being an expression of the life-awakening power of the sun, of the sun's objective essential power. A being which does not have its nature outside itself is not a nat ural being, and plays no part in the system of nature. A being which has no object outside itself is not an objective being. A being which is not itself an object for some third being has no being for its object; i.e., i t is not objectively related. Its be-ing is not objective. 1 A n unobjective being i s a nul lity a n un-being. Suppose a being which is neither an object itself, nor has an object. Such a being, in the first place, would be the unique being: there would exist no being outside it-it would -exist solitary and alone. For as soon as there are objects outside me, as soon as I am not alone, I a m another-another reality than the object outside me. For this third object I am thus an other reality tha n it; that is, I am its object. Th us, to suppose a being which is not the object of another being is to presuppose that no objective being exists . As soon as I have a n object, this object has me for an object. But a non-objective being is an unreal, nonsensical thing-something merely thought of (merely imagined, that is)-a creature of abstraction. To be sensuous, that is, to be an object of sense, to be a sensuous object, and thus to have sensuous objects outside one self-objects of one's sensuousness. To be sensuous is to suffer.s Man as an objective, sensuous being is therefore a suffering being -and because he feels what he suffers, a passionate being. Passion is the essential force o f man energetically bent on its object. Bu t man is not merely a natural bein g: he is a human natural being. That is to say, he is a being for himself. Therefore h e is a species being, and has to confirm and manifest himself as such both in his being and i n his k nowing. Therefore, human objects are not natural objects as they immediately present themselves, and neither is human sense as it immediately is-as i t is objectively human sensibility, human objectivity. Neither nature objectively nor nature subjectively is directly given in a form adequate to the human being. And as everything natural has to have its beginning, man too has his act of coming-to-be-history-which, h owever, is for him a known history, and hence as an act of coming-to-be it is a conscious self-transcending act of coming- to-be. History is the true -
7. " B e ing"-Wes e n ; "natnre"-Natur; "system"-Wesen; " b e - i n g "- Sein 8. "To be sensuous is to s uffer" -Sinnlich sein ist leidend sein. Here "to s u ff er" should probably b e u n der -
.
stood in the sense of "to undergo"-to be the object of another's action. Note the t r ansiti o n in the next sentence from Leiden (suffering) to leidenschaftlich ( passionat e).
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na tural history of man (on which more l a ter) . Thirdly, because this establishing of thinghood is itself only sham, an act contradicting the nature of p u re activity, it has to be cancelled again and thinghood denied. Re. 3, 4, 5 and 6. (3) This externalization of consciousness h as not merely a negative but a positive significance, and (4) it has this meaning not merely for us or intrinsically, but for conscious ness itself.9 (5) For co nsciousness the negative of the object, its annulling of itself, has positive significance-consciousness knows this nullity of the object because it alienates itself; for in this alieno. at ion it knows itself as object, or, for the sake of the indivisible unity of being-for·itself, the object as itsel f. (6) On the other hand, there is also this other moment in the process, that consciousness has also just as much annulled and superseded this alienation and objectivity and resumed them into itself, being thus at home with itself in its other-being as such. As we have already seen: the appropriation of what is estranged and objective, or the annulling of objectivity in the form of estrangement ( which has to advance from indifferent foreignness to real, antagonistic estrangement ) means equally or even primarily for Hegel that it is objectivity which is to be annulled, because it is not the determinate character of the object, but rather its objective character that is offensive and constitutes estrangement for self consciousness. The object is therefore something negative, self annulling-a nullity. This nullity of the object has not only a nega tive but a positive meaning for consciousness, for such a nullity of the object is precisely the self·confirmation of the non· objectivity, of the abstraction of itself . For consciousness itself this nullity of the object has a positive meaning because it knows this nullity, the objective being, as its self-alienation; because it knows that i t exists only as a result of its own self-alienation .... The way in which consciousness is, and in which something is for it, is knowing. Knowing is its sale act. Something therefore comes to be for consciousness in so far as the latter knows this something. Knowing is its sale objective relation . Consciousness; then, knows the nullity of the object (i.e., knows the non-existence of the distinction between the object and itself, the non-existence of the object for it) because it knows the object as its self' alienation; that is, it knows itself-knows knowing as the object-because the object is only the semblance of an object, a piece of mystification, which in its essence, however, is nothng else but knowing itself, which has confronted itself with itself and in so 9. Here Marx has taken the impersonal pronoun es ( i t) to represent Bewusst sein (consciousness) ; but it seems
that Baillie is more correct in reading this as st anding for Selbstbewusstsein (sel f-consciousness ) . In the first quo tation of this passage (p. 1 1 4) Marx
simply uses es without specifyi ng what it represents, and the translation has followed Baillie in interpreting i t as "self-consciousness." In the present repetition of the passage, Marx's speci fication of the "it" as "consciousness" ' has been followed in the translation.
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i'.\ I;
The Early Marx
doing has confron ted itself with � nullity-a so�ething which h �s mg knows !hat m no objectivity outside the know mg. Or: know . , relating itself to an object it is only outslde ltself- tha t lt only externalizes itself; that it itself appears to itself only as an ob;ect-or that that which appears to it a s an object is only it itself. On the other hand, says Hegel, there is at the same time this other moment i n this process, that consciousness has just as much annulled and superseded this externalization and objectivity a n d resumed them into itself, being thus at home in i t s other-being as s uch. In this discussion are brought together all the illusions of specu lation. First of all: consciousness-self-consciousness-is at home with itself in its other-being as such . I t is therefore-or if we here abstract from the Hegelian abstraction and put the self-con sciousness of man instead of Self-consciousness-it is at home with itself in its other-being, as such . This implies, for one thing, that consciousness (knowing as knowing, thinking as thinking) pre tends to be directly the other of itself-to be the world of sense, the real world, life-th ought over-rea ching itself in thought (Feuerbach ) .1 This aspect is contained herein, inasmuch a s con sciousness as mere consciousness takes offence not at estranged objectivity, but a t objectivity as such. Secondly, this implies that self-conscious man, in so far a s he has recognized and annulled and superseded the spiritual world (or his world's spiritual, general mode of being) as self-alienation, nev ertheless again confirms this in its alienated shape and passes it off as his true mode of being-re-establishes it, and pretends to be at home in his othe r-being as such. Thus, for instance, after annulling and superseding religion, after recognizing religion to b e a product of self-alienation, he yet finds confirmation of himself in religion as religion. Here is the roo t of Hegel's false positivism, or of his merely apparent criticism: this is wha t Feuerbach designated as the positing, negating and re-establishing o f religion or theology-but it has t o be grasped in more general terms. Thus reason is a t home in unreason a s unreason. The m a n who has recognized that he i s leading an alienated life in politics, law, etc., i s leading his true human life in this alienated life as such . Self-affirmation, in contra diction with itself-in contradiction both with the kn owledge of and with the essential being of the object-is thus true knowledge and life. There can therefore no longer be any question about an act of accommodation on Hegel's part vis-a-vis religion, the state, etc., 1. Marx refers t o § 3 0 o f Feuerbach's GruIJdsiitze de, Philosophie deT Zukun/t, which says: "Hegel is a
thinker who thinking."
transcends
!1imself
in
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sin.ce this lie is the lie of his principle. If I know religion as alienated h uman self-consciousness, then what I know in it as religion is not my self-consciousness, but my alienated self-consciousness confirmed i n it. I therefore know my own self, the self-consciousness that belongs to its very nature, con firmed n ot in religion but rather in annihilated and superseded reli gion . In Hegel, therefore, the negation of the negation is not the con· firmation of the true essence, effected precisely through negation of th e pseudo-essence . With him the negation of the negation is the confirmation o f the pseudo-essence, or of the self-estranged essence in its denial; or it is the denial of- this pseudo-essence as an objec tive being dwelling outside man and independent of him, and its transformation into the subject. A peculiar role, therefore, is played by the act of superseding in which denial and preservation-denial and affirmation-are bound together. Thus, for example, in Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Private Right superseded equals Morality, Morality superseded equals the Family, the Family superseded equals Civil Society, Civil Society superseded equals the State, the State superseded equals World History. In the actual world private right, morality, the family, civil society, the state, etc., remain in existence, only they have become moments of man-state of his existence and b eing-which h ave no validity in isolation, but dissolve and engender one another, etc. They have become moments of motio n. In their actual existence this mobile nature of theirs is hidden. It first appears and is made manifest in thought, in philosop hy. Hence my true religious existence is my existence in the philosophy of religion; my true political existence is my existence within the philosophy of right; my true natural existence, existence in the phi losophy of nature; my true artistic existence, existence in the philos ophy of art; my true human existence, my existence in philosophy. Likewise the true existence of religion, the state, nature, art is, the philosophy of religion, of nature, of the state and of art. If, how ever, the philosophy of religion, etc., is for me the sole true exist ence of religion, then, too, it is only as a philosopher of religion that I am truly religious, and so I deny real religious sentiment and the really religious man. But at the same time I assert them, in part within my own existence or within the alien existence which I oppose to them-for this is only their philosophic expres sion-and in part I assert them in their own original shape, for they have validity for me as merely th e apparent other-being, as allegories, forms of their own true existence ( i.e., of my philosophi cal existence ) hidden under sensuous disguises. In just the same way, Quality superseded equals Quantity, Quan tity superseded equals Measure, Measure superseded equals
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The Early Marx
Essence, Essence superseded equals Appearance, Appearance superseded equals Actuality, Actuality superseded equals the Co n cept, the Concept superseded equals Objectivity, Objectivity superseded equals the Absolute Idea, the Absolute Idea superseded equals Nature, Nature superseded equals Ethical Objective Mind, Ethical Mind superseded equals Art, Art superseded equals Reli gion, Religion superseded equals Absolute Knowledge.2 On the one hand, this act of superseding is a transcending of the thought entity; thus, Private Property as a thought is transcended in the thought of morality. And because thought imagines itself to be directly the other of itself, to be sensuous realit y-and therefore takes its own action for sensuous, real action-this superseding in thought, which leaves its object standing in the real world, believes that it has really overcome it. On the other hand, because the object has now become for it a moment of thought, thought takes it in its reality too to be self-confirmation of itself-of self· consciousness, of abstraction. From the one point of view the existent which Hegel supersedes in philosophy is therefore not real religion, the real state, or real nature, but religion itself already become an object of knowledge, i.c., Dogmatics; thc samc with Jurisprudence, Political Science and Natural Science. From the one P9int of view, therefore, he stands in opposition both to the real thing and to immediate, unphilo sophic science or the unphilosophic conceptions of this thing. He therefore contradicts their conventional conceptions.3 On the other hand, the religious man, etc., can find in Hegel his final confirmation. It is now time to lay hold of the positive aspects of the Hegelian dialectic within the realm of estrangement. (a) Annulling as an objective movement of retracting the aliena tion into self. This is the insight, expressed within the· estrange ment, concerning the appropriation of the objective essence through the annulment of its estrangement; it is the estranged insight into the real objectification of man, into the real appropria tion of his objective essence through the annihilation of the estranged character of the objective world, through the annulment of the objective world in its estranged mode of being-just as atheism, being the annulment of God, is the advent of theoretic humanism, and communism, as the annulment of private property, is the justification of real human life as man's possession and thus the advent of practical humanism (or just as atheism is humanism mediated with itself through the annulment of religion, whilst com2. This sequence gives the major "cate gories" or "thought-forms" of Hegel's Encyclopaedia in the order in which they occur and are superseded. Simi larly, the sequence· above from "private right" to "world history" gives the ma-
jor categories of Hegel's Philosophy of Right in the order in which they ap pear there. 3. The conventional conception of the ology, jurisprudence, political science, natural science, etc.
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munism i s h umanism mediated with itself through the annulment of private property). Only through the annulment of this media tion-which is itself, however, a necessary premise-does positively self-deriving h umanism, positive humanism, come into being. B ut a theism and communism are no flight, no abstraction; they are not a losing of the objective world begotten by man-of man's essential powers given over to the realm of objectivity; they are not a returning in poverty to unnatural, primitive simplicity. On the contrary, they are but the firs t real coming-to-be, the realization become real for man, of man's essence-of the essence of man as something real. Thus, by grasping the positive meaning of self-referred negation (if even again in estranged fashion) Hegel grasps man's self estrangement, the alienation of man's essence, man's loss of objec tivity and his loss of realness as finding of self, change of his nature, his objectification and realization. In short, within the s phere o f abstraction, Hegel conceives labour as man's act of self genesis-conceives man's relation to himself as an alien being and the manifesting of h imself as an alien being to be the coming-to-be of species-consciousness and species-life . (b) However, apart from, or rather in consequence of, the per verseness already described, this act appears in Hegel: First of all as a merely formal, because abstract, act, because the h uman essence itself is taken to be only an abstract, thinking essence, conceived merely as. self-consciousness. And, secondly, because the conception is formal and abstract, the annulment of the alienation becomes a confirmation of the aliena tion; or again, for Hegel this movement o f self-genesis and self objectification in the form of self-alienation and self-estrangement is the absolute, and hence final, expression of human l ife o f life with itself as its aim, of l ife at rest in itself, of life that has attained oneness with its essence. This movement, in its abstract form as dialectic, is therefore regarded as truly human life, and because i t is nevertheless an abstraction-an estrangement of human life-it is regarded aSa divine process, but as the divine process of man, a process traversed by man's abstract, pure, absolute essence that is distinct from him .Thirdly, this process must have a bearer, a subject. But the sub ject first emerges as a res ult. This result-the subject knowing itself as absolute self-consciousness-is therefore God-absolute Spir it-the self-knowing and self-manifesting Idea. Real man and real nature become mere predicates-symbols of this esoteric, unreal man and of this unreal nature. S ubject and predicate are therefore related to each other in absolute inversion-a mystical subject object or a subjectivity reaching beyond the object the absolute subject as a process, as subject alienating itself and returning from alienation into itself, but at the same time retracting this alienation -
-
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into itself, and the subject as this process; a pure, restless revolving within itself. First, the formal and abstract conception of man's act of self genesis or self-objectification. Hegel having posited man as equivalent to self-consciousness, the estranged object-the estranged essential reality of man-is noth ing but consciousness, the thought of estrangement merely estrangement's abstract and therefore empty and unreal expression, negation. The ann ulment of the alienation is therefore likewise nothing but an abstract, empty annulment of that empty abstrac tion-the negation of the negation. The rich, living, sensuous, con crete activity of self-objectification is therefore reduced to its mere abstraction, absolute negativity-an abstraction which is again fixed as such and thought of as an independent activity-as sheer activ ity. Because this so-called negativity is nothing but the abstract, empty form of that real living act, its content can in consequence be merely a formal content begotten by abstraction from all con· tent. As a result there are general, abstract forms of abstraction per taining to every content and on that account indifferent to, and, consequently, valid for, all content-the thought-forms or logical categories torn from real mind and from real nature . ( We shall unfold the logical content of absolute negativity further on.) Hegel's positive achievement here, i n his speculative logic, is that the determinate concepts, the universal fixed thought-forms in their independence vis-a-vis nature and mind are a necessary result of the general estrangement of the human essence and therefore also of human thought, and that Hegel has there-fore brought these together and presented them as moments of the abstraction process. For example, superseded B eing is Essence, superseded Essence is Concept, the Concept superseded is ... the Absolute I dea. B ut what, then, is the Absolute Idea? It supersedes its own self again, if it does not want to traverse once more from the begin ning the whole act o f abstraction, and to acquiesce in being a totality of abstractions or in being the self-comprehending abstraction . But abstraction comprehending itself as abstraction knows itself to be nothing: it must abandon itself-abandon abstraction-and so it arrives at an entity which is its exact contrary -at nature. Thus, the entire Logic is the demonstration that abstract thought is nothing in itself; that the Absolute Idea is noth ing in itself; that only Nature is something. The absolute idea, the abstract idea, which "considered with regard to its unity with itself is intuiting,"4 ( Hegel's Encyclopae4. The Logic 0/ Hegel, trans. Wallace, • 244. "Intuiting" is here used to ren der A nschauen. In popular usage A n schauen means "to contemplate," but Hegel is here using the word, like Kant, as a technical term in philosophy
meaning, roughly, "to be aware through the senses." "Intuiting," like wise, should be understood here not in its popular sense but as the philosophi cal term which is the recognized Eng lish equivalent of A nschauen.
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) , a n d which "in its own absolute truth moment of its particularity or of initial cha racterization and other-being-the immediate idea, as its reflec tion, go forth freely from itself as nature" ( l . c .)-this whole idea which behaves in such a strange and singular way, and which has given the Hegelians such terrible headaches, is from beginning to end nothing else but abstraction ( i .e., the abstract thinker) abstraction which, made wise b y experience and enlightened concerning its truth, resolves under various ( false and themselves still abstrac t) conditions to abandon itself and to replace its self absorption, nothingness, generality and indeterminateness by its other-being, the particular, and the determinate; resolves to let nature, \vhich it held h idden in itself only as an abstraction, a s a thought-entity, go forth freely from itself: that is to say, abstraction resolves to forsake abstraction and to have a look at nature free of abstraction . The abstract idea, which without mediation becomes . intuiting, is nothing else through-and-through but abstract thinking that gives itself up and resolves on intuition. This entire transition from Logic to Natural Philosophy is nothing else but the tran sition-so difficult to effect for the abstract thinker and therefore so queer in his description of it-from abstracting to intuiting. The mystical feeling which drives the philosopher forward from abstract thinking to intuiting is boredom-the longing for a conten t. ( The m a n estranged from himself is also the thinker estranged from his essence-that is, from the natural and h uman essence . His thoughts are therefore fixed mental shapes or ghosts dwelling out side nature and man . Hegel has locked up all these fixed mental forms together in his Logic, laying hold of each of them first as negation-that is, as an alienation of human thought-and then as negation of the negation-that is, as a superseding of this alienation, as a real expression of human though t. But as even this still takes place within the confines of the estrangement, this negation of the negation is in part the restoring of these fixed " forms in their estrangement; in part a stopping-short at the last act-the act of self-reference in alienation-as the true mod� ·of being of these fixed mental forms;5 and in part, to the extent that this abstraction apprehends itself .and experiences an infinite wea riness with itself, there makes its appearance in Hegel, in the form
.. dia, 3rd edition, p . " resolves to let the
222
S. This means that what Hegel does is
to put in place of these fixed abstrac tions the act of abstraction which re volves in its own circle. In so doing, he has the merit, in the first place, of having indicated the source of all these inappropriate concepts which, as origi nally presented, belonged to disparate philosophies; of having brought them together; and of having created the en tire compass of abstraction exhaus tively set out as the object of criticism,
instead of some specific ·abstraction. (Why Hegel separates thought from the subject we shall see later: at this stage it is already clear, however, that when man is not, his characteristic ex pression also cannot be human, and so neither could thought be grasped as an expression of man as a human and nat ural subject endowed with eyes, ears, etc., and living in society, in the world, and in nature.) [Marx]
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of the resolution to recognize nature as the essential being and to go over to intuition, the abandonment of abstract thought-the abandonment of thought revolving solely within the orbit of thought, of thought devoid of eyes, of teeth, of ears, of every thing.) But nature too, taken abstractly, for itself-nature fixed in isola tion from man-is nothing for man . It goes without saying that the abstract thinker who has committed h imself to intuiting, intuits nature abstractly. Just as nature lay enclosed in the thinker in the form of the absolute idea, in the form of a thought-en tity-in a shape which is his and yet is esoteric and mysterious even to him-so what he has let go forth from himsel f in truth is only this abstract nature, only nature as a thought-entity-but with the sig nificance now of being the other-being of thought, of being real, intuited nature-of being nature distinguished from abstract thought. Or, to talk a human language, the abstract thinker learns in his intuition of nature that the entities which he thought to create from nothing, from pure abstraction-the entities he believed he was producing in the divine dialectic a s pure products of the labour of thought forever weaving in itself and never looking outward-are nothing else but abstractions from characteristics of nature. To him, therefore, the whole of nature merely repeats the logical abstractions in a sensuous, external form . He analyses it and these abstractions over again. Thus, his intuition of nature is only the act of confirming his abstraction from the intuition of nature-is only the conscious repetition by him of the process of begetting his abstraction . Thus, for example, Time equals Negativ ity referred to itself (Le., p. 238): to the superseded Becoming as B eing there corresponds, in natural form, superseded Movement as Matter. Light is Reflection-in-Itself, in natural form. Body as Moon and Comet is the natural form of the antithesis which according to the Logic is on the one side t he Positive resting on itself and on the other side the Negative resting on itself. The Earth is the natu ral form of the logical Ground, as the negative unity of the anti the sis, etc.' Nature as natu re-that is to say, in so far a s it is still sensuously distinguished from that secret sense hidden within it-nature iso lated, distinguished from these abstractions, is nothing-a nothing proving itself to be nothing-is devoid of sense, or has only the sense of being an externality which has to be annulled. "In t h e finite-teleological position i s to be found t h e correct premise that nature does not contain within itself the absolute purpose " ( p . 22 5 ) -
Its purpose is the confirmation of abstraction. 6. Time,
Motion, Matter, Light, etc., are forms distinguished w i t h i n Hegel's
Philosophy of Nature_ Becoming, etc., are of course categories of the Logic.
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"Nature has shown itself to be the Idea in the form of other-being. Since the Idea is in this form the negative of itself or external to itself, nature is not just relatively external vis-a-vis this idea, but externality constitutes the form in which it exists as nature" (p.
227 ) .
Externality here is not to be understood as the self-externalizing world of sense open to the light, open to the man endowed with senses . It is to be taken here in the sense of alienation-a mistake, a defect, which ought not to be. For what is true is still the Idea. Nature is only the form of t he Idea's o ther-being. And since abstract thought is the essence, t hat which is external to it is by its essence something merely external. The abstract thinker recognizes at the same time that sensuousness-externality in contrast to thought weaving within itself-is the essence of nature. But he expresses his contrast in such a way as to make this externality of nature, its contrast to thought, its defect, so that inasmuch as it is distinguished from abstraction, nature is something defective. Something which is defective not merely for me or in my eyes but in itself-intrinsically-has something outside itself which it lacks. That is, its being is something other than it itself. Nature has therefore to supersede itself for the abstract thinker, for it is already posited by him as a potentially superseded being .
"For us, Mind has nature for its premise, being nature's truth and for that reason its absolute prius. In this truth nature has vanished, and mind has resulted as the Idea arrived at being for-itself, the object of which, as well as the subject, is the con cept. This identity is absolute negativity, for whereas in nature the concept has its perfect external objectivity, this its alienation has been superseded, and in this alienation the concept has become identical with itself. B ut it is this identity, therefore, only in being a return out of nature" (p . 3 9 2 ) . "As the abstract idea, revelation is unmediated transition to, the coming-to-be of, nature; as the revelation of the mind, which is free, it is the establishing of nature as the mind's world-an establishing which at the same time, being reflection, is a presup posing of the world as independently-existing nature . Revelation in conception is the creation of nature as the mind's being, in which the mind procures the affirmation and the truth of its freedom. " 7 "The absolute is mind. This is the highest definition of the absolute." 7 . C f . Hegel's PhilosOPhy o f Mind, trans. Wallace, � 3 8 1 . But i n rendering these passages from the Encyclopaedia,
the present translator has not followed Wallace closely.
Critical Marginal Notes on the A rticle "The King of Prussia and Social Reform" KARL MARX Apart from showing M arx's pride in being the socialist spokesman o f a revo lutionarily "philosophical people," the G e rmans, and his sense of the theo retical preeminence o f German socialist thought because of its philosophical depth, this early article i s especially notable for its discussion o f the relation between social and p o litical revoluti o n . The "Prussian" who wrote the arti cle Marx attacks was Arnold Ruge. The event under discussion was the Sile sian weavers' uprising o f June 1 8 4 4 . The essay was written in July 1 8 44 and published the following month in the newspaper Vorwiirts.
No. 60 of Vorwarts contains an article headed "Der Konig von Preussen und die Sozialreform," signed "A Prussian. " First of all this alleged Prussian sets out the content o f the royal Prussian Cabinet order on the uprising of the Silesian workers and the opinion of the French newspaper La Reforme on the Prussian Cabinet order. The Reforme, he writes, considers that the King's "alarm and religious feeling" are the source of the Cabinet order. It even sees in this document a presentim e nt of the great reforms which are in prospect for bourgeois society . The "Prussian" lectures the Reforme as follows : The King and German society has not yet arrived at the 'pre sentiment of their reform," even the Silesian and B ohemian uprisings have not aroused this feeling. It is impossible to make such an unpolitical country as Gemany regard the partial distress of the factory districts as a matter of general concern, let alone as an affliction of the whole civilised world. The Germans regard this event as if it were of the same nature as any local distress due to flood or famine. Hence the King regards it as due to deficiencies in the administration or in charitable act ivi ty. For this reason, and because a few soldiers sufficed to co pe with the feeble weavers, the destruction of factories and machinery, too, did not inspire any "alarm" either in the King or the authorities. Indeed, the Cabinet order was not prompted even by r e ligious feeling : it is a very sober expression of the Christian art of states manship and of a doctrine which considers that no difficulties can withstand its sole medicine-"the well-disposed Christian hearts ." Poverty and crime are two great evils; who can cure them? The state and the authorities? No, but the union of all Christian hearts can . 126
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The alleged Prussian denies the King's "alarm" o n the grounds, among others, that a few soldiers sufficed to cope with the feeble weavers . Therefore, in a country where ceremonial dinners with liberal toast s and liberally foami n"g champagne-recall the Dusseldorf fes ti val-inspired a royal Cabinet order;1 where not a single soldier was needed to shatter the desires of the entire liberal bourgeoisie for freedom of the press and a constitution; in a country where passive obedience is the order of the day-<:an it be that in such a country the necessitv to employ armed force against feeble weavers is not an event, and not an alarming event? Moreover, at the first encounter the feeble weavers were victorious. They were suppressed only by s ubsequent troop reinforcements. Is the uprising of a body of workers less dangerous because i t did not require a whole army to suppress it? Let the wise Prussian compare the uprising of the Sile sian weavers with the revolts of the English workers, and the Sile sian weavers will be seen by him to be strong weavers . Starting out from the general relation of politics to social ills, we shall sh ow why the uprising of the weavers c ould not cause the King any special "alarm. " For the time being we shall say only the followin g : the uprising was not aimed directly against the King of Prussia, but against the bourgeoisie. As an aristocrat and absolute monarch, the King of Prussia cannot love the bourgeoisie; still less can he be alarmed if the submissiveness and impotence of the bour geoisie is increased because of a tense and difficult relati onship between it and the proletariat. Further: the orthodox Catholic is more hostile to the orthodox Protestant than to the atheist, j ust as the Legitimist is more hostile to the liberal than to the Communis t . This is n o t because t h e atheist a n d the Communist are more akin to the Catholic or Legitimist, but because they are more foreign to him than are the Protestant and the liberal, being outside h is circle. In the sphere of politics, the King of Prussia, as a politician, h as his direct opposite in liberalism. For the King, the proletariat is as little an antithesis as the King is fo r the proletariat. The proletariat would have to have already attained considerable power for it to stifle the other antipathies and political antitheses and to divert to itself all political enmity. Finally : in view of the well-known charac ter of the King, avid for anything interesting and significant, it must have been a j oyful surprise for him to discover this "interest ing" and "much discussed" pauperism in h is own territory and con sequently a new opportunity for making people talk about h i m . H o w pleasant for him must have been t h e news t h a t henceforth he posseses his "own, " royal Prussian pauperism! *
1 . A royal order of July 1 8 , 1 8 43 , pro·
h i b i t i n g government officials from taki n g pa r t i n events such as an official
*
*
banquet arranged Dussel dorf.
by
the
liberals
in
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The Early Marx
Let us s·uppose * * * that the "Prussian's" remarks about the German Government and the German bourgeoisie-after all, the latter is included in " German society"-are entirely well foun ded. Is this section of society more at a loss in Germany than in England and France? Can one be more at a loss than, for example, in Eng land, where perplexity has been made into a system? \Vhen today workers' revolts break out throughout England, the bourgeoisie and government there know no better what to do than in the last third of the eighteenth century. Their sole expedient is material force, and since this material force diminishes in the same proportion as the spread of pauperism and the understanding of the proletariat increase, England's perplexity inevitably grows in geometrical pro gression . Finally, it is untrue, actually untrue, that the German bourgeoisie totally fails to understand the general significance of the Silesian uprising. In several towns the masters are trying to act jointly with the apprentices . All the liberal German newspapers, the organs of the liberal bourgeoisie, teem with articles a bout the organisation o f labour, t h e reform of society, criticism of monopolies a n d competi tion, etc. All this is the result of the movements among the work ers . * * * * * * Let us pass now to the oracular pronouncements of the "Prus sian" on the German workers. " The German poor," he says wittily, "are no wiser than the poor Germans, i.e., nowhere do they see beyond their own hearth and home, their own factory, their own district; the whole question has so far still been ignored by the all penetrating political soul." In order to be able t o compare the condition of the German workers with the condition of the French and English workers, the " Prussian" would have had to compare the first form, the start, of the English and French workers' movement with the German movement that is iust beginning. He failed to do so. Consequently, his arguments lead to trivialities, such as that industry in Germany is not yet so developed as in England, or that a movement at its start looks different from the movement in its subsequent progress . He wanted t o speak about the specific character of the German workers' movement, but he has not a word to say on this subject of his . O n the other hand, suppose the "P russian" were to adopt the correct standpoint. He will find that not one of the French and English workers' uprisings had such a theoretical and conscious character as the uprising of the Silesian weavers . First of all, recall the song of the weavers,2 that bold call to 2. This refers to the song Das weavers on the eve of the revolt.
Blutgericht,
which
was
popular
among
the
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struggle, in which there i s not even a mention o f hearth a n d home, factory or district, but in which the proletariat at once, in a striking, sharp, unrestrained and powerful manner, proclaims its opposition to the society of private property. The Silesian uprising begins pre cisely with what the French and English workers' uprisings end, with consciousness of the nature of the proletariat. The action itself bears the stamp of this superior character. Not only machines, these rivals of the workers, are destroyed, but also ledgers, the titles to property. And while all other movements were aimed primarily only against the owner of the industrial enterprise, the visible enemy, this movement is at the same time directed against the banker, the hidden enemy. Finally, not a single English workers' uprising was carried out with such courage, thought and endurance. As for the educational level or capacity for education of the German workers i n general, I call to mind Weitling's brilliant writ ings, which as regards theory are often superior even to those of Proudhon, however much they are inferior to the latter in their exe cution. \Vhere among the bourgeoisie-including its philosophers and learned writers-is to be found a book about the emancipation of the bou rgeoisie-p o l itical emancipation-similar to \Veitling's work : Garantien der Harmonie und Freiheit? It is enough to com pare the petty, faint-hearted mediocrity of German political litera ture with this vehement and briHiant literary debut of the German workers, it is enough to compare these gigantic infant shoes of the proleta riat with the dwarfish, worn-out political shoes of the German bourgeoisie, and one is bound to prophesy that the German Cinderella wiH one day have the figure of an athlete. It has to be admitted that the German proletariat is the theoretician of the European proletariat, just as the English proletariat is its econo mist, and the French proletariat its politician. It has to be admitted that Germany is j ust as much classically destined for a social revolu tion as it is incapable of a political one. For, just as the impotence of the German bourgeoisie is the political impotence of Germany, so also the capability of the German proletariat-even apart from German theory-represents the social capability of Germany. The disparity between the philosophical and the political development of Germany is not an anomaly. It is an inevitable disparity. A philo sophical people can find its corresponding practice only in socialism , hence it is only in the proletariat that it can find the dynamic ele ments of its emancipation . 00<
00<
00<
\Vhy does the "Prussian" j udge the German workers so contemp tuously? Because he finds that the "whole q uestion"-namely, the question of the distressed state of the workers-has "so far still" been ignored by the "all-penetrating political sou! . " He expounds his platonic love for the political soul i n more detail as follows : "All
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The Early Marx
uprisings which break out in this disastrous isolation of people from the community, and of their thoughts from social principles, will be smothered in blood and incomprehension; but when distress pro duces understanding, and the political understanding of the Ger mans discovers the roots of social distress, then in Germany too these events will be appreciated as symptoms of a great revolutio n . " *
*
*
That social distress produces political understanding is so incor rect . that, on the contrary, what is correct is the opposite : social well-being produces political understanding. Political understanding is a spiritualist, and is given to him who already has, to him who is already comfortably situated. Let our "Prussian" l isten to a French economist, M. Michel Chevalier, on this s ubjec t: "'Vhen the bour geoisie rose up in 1 789, it lacked-in order to be free-only partici pation in governing th e country. Emancipation consisted for it in wresting the control of public affairs, the principal civil, military and religious functions, from the hands of the privileged who had the monopoly of these functions. Rich and enlightened, capable o f being self-sufficient and o f managing i t s o w n affairs, it wanted to escape from the system of arbitrary rule . " 3 We have already shown the "Pruss ian" how incapable political understanding is of discovering the source of social distress. Just one word more on this view of h i s . The more developed and universal the political understanding of a people, the more does the proletar i a t at any rate at the beginning of th e movement-s q uander its forces in senseless, useless revolts, which are drowned in blood. Because it thinks i n the framework o f politics, the proletariat sees the cause of all evils in the will, and all means of remedy in vio lence and in the overthrow of a particular form of state. The proof : the first uprisings of the French proletariat.4 The Lyons workers believed that they were pursuing only political aims, that they were only soldiers of the republic, whereas actually they were soldiers of socialis m . Thus their political understanding concealed from them the roots of social distress, thus it falsified their insight into their real aim, thus their political understanding deceived their social -
instinct.
But if the "Prussian" expects understanding to be produced by distress, why does he lump together "smothering in blood" and "smothering in incomprehension"? If distress is in general a means of producing understanding, then bloody distress is even a very acute means to this end. The "Prussian" therefore should have said : 3 . M. Chevalier, Des interets ma teriels (Marx gives a free translation ) .
en France, p. 3
4. Marx is referring to the revolts of t h e Lyons weavers in November 1 8 3 1 a n d April 1 8 34 .
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smothering i n blood will smother incomprehension and procure a proper current of air for the understanding. Th e "Prussian" prophesies the smothering of uprisings which break out in "disastrous isolation of people from the community, and in the separation of their thoughts from social principles. " We have shown that the Silesian uprising occurred b y n o means in circumstances of the separation of thoughts from social princi ples. It only remains for us to deal with the "disastrous isolation of people from the community . " By community here is meant th e political community, the state. This is the old story about unpoliti cal Germany. But do not all uprisings, without exception, break out in a disas trous isolation of man from the community? Does not every upris ing necessarily presuppose isolation? \Vould the 1 78 9 revolution have taken place without the disastrous isolation of French citizens from the community? It was intended precisely to abolish this isola tion. But the community from which the worker is isolated is a com munity the real character and scope of which is quite different from that of the political community . The community from which the worker is isolated by his own laboUT is life itself, physical and mental life, human morality, human activity, human enjoyment, human nature . Human nature is the true community of men. The disastrous isolation from this essential nature is incomparably more universal, more intolerable, more dreadful, and more contradictory, than isolation from the political community. Hence, too, the aboli tion of this isolation-and even a partial reaction to it, an uprising against it-is just as much more infinite as man is more infinite than the citizen, and human life more infinite than political life. Therefore, however partial the uprising of the industrial workers may be, it contains within itself a universal soul; however universal a political uprising may be, it conceals even in its most grandios e form a narrow-minded spirit. The "Prussian" worthily concludes his article with the following sentenc e : "A social revolution without a political soul (i.e. , without an organising idea from the point of view of the whole ) is im possible." We have already seen that a social revolution is found to have the point of view of the whole because-even if it were to occur in only one factory district-it represents man's protest against a de_ humanised life, because it starts out from the point of view of a separate real individual, because the community, against the separa tion of which from himself the individual reacts, is man's true com munity, human nature. The political soul of revolution, on the other hand, consists in the tendency of classes having no political
1 32
The Early Marx
influence to abolish their isolation from statehood and rule. Its point of view is that of the state, of a n abstract whole, which exists only through separation from real life, and which is inconceivable without the organised contradiction between the universal idea of man and the individual existence of man. Hence, too, a revolution with a political soul, in accordance with the limited and dichoto mous nature of this soul, organises a ruling stratum in society at the expense of suciety itself. \Ve want to divulge to the " Pr ussian" what a "social revolution with a political soul " actually is; we shall thereby a t the same time confide the secret to him that h e himself is unable, even in words, to rise above the narrow-mi nded political point of view. A "social" revolution with a political soul is either a nonsensical concoction, if by "social" revolution the "Pruss ian" means a "social" as opposed to a political revolution, and neverth eless endows the social revolution with a political soul instead of a social one; or else a "social revolut ion with a political soul" is only a para phrase for what was usuaJly called a "political revolution," or "simply a revolution." Every revolution dissolves the old societ!' and to that extent it is social. Every revolution overthrows the old po wer a n d to that extent it is political. Let the "Pruss ian" choo se between the paraphrase and the non sense! But whereas a social revolution with a political soul is a para phrase or nonsense, ' a political revolution \vith a social soul has a rational meaning. Revolution in general-the overthrow of the existing power and dissolution of the old relationships-is a politi cal aat. But socialism cannot be realised without revolution. I t needs this political a c t insofar as i t needs destruction a n d dissolu tion. But where its organising activit!' begins, where its proper ob;ect, its soul, comes to the fore-there socialism throws off the political cloak. *
*
*
Alienation and Social Classes KARL MARX
A m e e t i n g between M a r x and E n g e l s in P a ris a t the end of August, 1 8 44, inaugurated their lifelong collaboration . Their first j ointly written work, published i n 1 8 4 5 , was The Holy Family: A Critique of Critical Criticism, a
heavily satirical polemic against Bruno Bauer and the Young Hegelians.
The following passage, probably written b y Marx, shows the alienation doc trine o f the 1 8 44 manuscripts merging into the class struggle doctrine as we encounter i t in The German Ideology and later Marxist writings. I t is also o f value as a revelation o f Marx's special way of conceiving and ex plaining historical necessi ty. The t ranslation for this edition i s by R . C. Tucker.
* * * The proletariat and wealth are opposites. As such they form a whole . They are both products of the world of private prop erty. The whole question is what position each of these two ele ments occupies within the opposition . It does not suffice to pro claim them two sides of one whole. Private property as private property, as wealth, is compelled to preserve its own existence and thereby the existence of its opposite, the proletariat. This is the positive side o f the antagonism, private property satisfied with itself. The proletariat, on the other hand, is compelled to abolishl i t self and thereby its conditioning opposite-private property-which makes it a proletariat. This is the negative side of the antagonism, i ts disturbance within itself, private property abolished and in the process of abolishing i tself. The possessing class and the proletarian class represent one and the same h u man self-alienation.2 B u t the former feels satisfied and affirmed in this sel f-alienation, experiences the alienation as a sign of its own power, and possesses in it the appearance of a human existence. The latter, however, feels destroyed in this alienation, seeing in i t its own impotence and the reality of an inhuman exist ence. To use Hegel's expression, this class is, within depravity, an
qua proletariat . auihebell [R. T.J
1 . I.e.,
The
verb
is
133
2. The
term
u se d here
iTemdung. [R . T.J
is
Selbstellt-
134
The Early Marx
indignation against this depravity, an indignation necessarily aroused in this class by the contradiction between its human nature and its life-situation, which is a blatant, outright and all-embracing denial of that very na ture. Within the antagonism as a whole, therefore, private property represents the conservative side and the proletariat the destructive side. From the former comes action aimed at preserving the antago nism; from the latter, action aimed at its destruction . In its economic movement, it is true, private property presses towards its own dissolution, but it does this only by means of a developmental course that is unconscious and takes place independ ently of it and against its will, a course determined by the nature of the thing itself. I t does this only by giving rise to the proletariat as proletariat-this poverty conscious of its own spiritual and physic�l poverty, this dehumanization which is conscious of itself as a dehu manization and hence abolishes itself.3 The proletariat executes the sentence that proletariat-producing private property passes upon itself, just as it executes the sentence that wage labour passes upon itself by producing others' wealth and its own poverty. \Vhen the proletariat wins victory, it by no means becomes the absolute side of society, for it wins victory only by abolishing itself and its oppo site. Both the proletariat itself and its conditioning opposite private property-.,-- disappear with the victory of the proletariat. I f socialist writers attribute this world-historical role to the prole tariat, this is by no means, as critical criticism assures us, because they regard the proletarians as gods. On the contrary. Since the fully formed proletariat represents, practically speaking, the com pleted abstraction from everything human, even from the appear ance of being h uman; since all the living conditions of contempo rary society have reached the aC¥1e of inhumanity in the living con ditions of the proletariat; Since \i n the proletariat man has lost him self, although at the same time he has both acquired a theoretical consciousness of this loss and has been directly forced into indigna tion against this inh umanity by virtue of an inexorable, utterly unembellishable, absolutely imperious need, that practical expres sion of necessity-pecause of all this the proletariat itself can and must liberate itself ;} B ut it cannot liberate itself without destroying " its own living cond itions . It cannot do so without destroying all the inhuman living conditions of contemporary society which are con centrated in its own situation. Not in vain does it go through the harsh but hardening school of labour. It is not a matter of what this or that proletarian or even the proletariat as a whole pictures at present as its goal . It is a matter of what the proletariat is in actu ality and what, in accordance with this being, it will historically be 3 . Here a n d further on in this paragraph, t h e word translated as "abolish" i s au! heben. [R . T.]
Alienation and Social Classes
135
I t s goal and its h istorical action are prefigured in t h e most clear a n d ineluctable way in i t s own life-situation as well as i n the whole organization of con temporary bourgeois so cie t y There is no need to h arp on the fact that a large part of the Eng lish and French proletariat is already co nscious of its h istoric task and is continually working to bring t h is consciousn ess to full clar compelled t o d o .
.
i ty.
Society and Economy in History KARL MARX This selection comes from Marx's letter o f December 2 8 , 1 84 6 , to P. V. Annenkov, who had asked for his o pini on o f Pierre· Joseph Proudhon's new
b o o k The Philosophy of Poverty. Ma rx subsequently expanded his critique of the book into a book-length polemic, The Poverty of Philosophy the
m e a t of which is succinctly stated in this letter ) .
(
The material here presented is of interest as a trenchant statement of the materialist co nc e pt io n of history, Marx's en la rged un derstanding o f the divi
sion o f labor as a ubiquitous fact of human h is to ri cal development, his view on the e v ol u ti o n of ma c h i ne ry, and h is notion of d i a lec ti cs as a p r o ce s s that
finds final resolution i n a social condition beyond conflict t io n s " )
.
( " c o n t ra di c
Since this document appeared at the close of Marx's early period,
it conclusively d is p r o ve s the notion o f a hiatus between a Hegelian. Feuer·
bachian philosophical early Marx who hadn't reached historical materialism, and a scientific mature Marx who had. '" I t was in a n d through the early
writings represented i n this section of our reader that Marx created histori cal materialism.
'" '" '" '" '" '" M. Proudhon sees in history a series of social developments; he finds progress realised in history; finally h e finds that men , as individuals, did not know what they were doing and were mistaken about their own movement, that is to say, their social develop ment seems at the first glance to be distinct, separate and inde pendent of their individual development. He cannot explain these facts, a nd so the hypothesis of universal reason manifesting itself comes in very handy. Nothing is easier than t o invent mystical causes, that is to say, phrases which lack common sense. B ut when M . Proudhon admits that he understands nothing about the historical development of humanity-he admits this by using such high-sounding words as : Universal Reason, God, etc . is he not implicitly and necessarily admitting tha t he is i ncapable o f understanding economic development? \Vhat is society, whatever its form may be? The product of men's reciprocal action. Are men free to choose this or that form of society? By no means . Assume a particular state of development in the productive faculties of man and you will get a particular form of commerce and consumption . Assume particular stages of * A recent exponent o f the h i atus theory i s Louis Althusser. See h i s For 136
Marx, translated by Ben Brewster (New Yor k : Pantheon, 1 9 69 ) , e . g . , p. 4 7 .
Society and Economy i n History
1 37
development in production, commerce and consumption and you will have a corresponding social constitution, a corresponding organisation of the family, of orders or of classes, in a word, a corresponding civil society. Assume a particular civil society and you will get particular political conditions which are only the official expression of civil society. M. Proudhon will never understand this because he thinks h e is doing something great by appealing from the state to civil society-th at is to say, from the official resume of society to official society. I t is superfluous to add that men are not free to choose their pro ductive forces-which are the basis of all their h istory-for every productive force is an acquired force, the p roduct of former activity. Th e p roductive forces are therefore the result of practical h uman energy; but this energy is itself conditioned b y the circumstances in which men find themselves, by the productive forces already acquired, by the social form which exists before they do, which they do not create, which is the product of the preceding generation. Beca use of this simple fact that every succeeding generation finds itself in possession of th e productive forces acquired by the previous generation, which serve it as the raw material for new production, a coherence arises in human history, a history of humanity takes shape which is all the more a history of h umanity as the productive forces of man and therefore his social rclations have been more developed. Henc e i t n & essarily follows that the social history of men is never anything but the history of their individual develop ment, whether they are conscious of it or not. Their material rela tions are the basis of all their relations. These material relations are only the necessary forms in which their material and individual activity is realised. M. Proudhon m ixes u p ideas a n d things . Men never relinquish what they have won, but this does not mean that they never relin quish the social form in which they have acquired certain produc tive forces. On the contrary, in order that they may not be deprived are of the result attained and forfeit th e fruits of civilisation, they ' obliged, from the moment when their mode of carrying on com merce no longer corresponds to the productive forces acquired, to change all their traditional social forms. I am using the word "com merce " h ere i n its widest sense, as we use Ver/whr i n German. For example : the privileges, the institution of guilds and corporations, the regulatory regime of th e Middle Ages, were social relations that alone corresponded to the acquired productive forces and to the social condition which had previously existed and from which these institutions had arisen . Under the protection of the regime of cor porations and regulations, capital was accumulated, overseas trade was developed, colonies were founde d . But the fruits of this men
1 38
The Early Marx
would h ave forfeited if they had tried to retain th e forms under wh ose shelter th ese fruits had ripened . Hence burst two th under claps-the Revol utions of 1 640 and 1 688. All the old economic forms, the social relation s corresponding to them, the political con ditions which were the official expression of the old civil society, were destroyed in England. Thus the economic forms in which men produce, consume, and exchange, are transitory and historical. With the acquisition of new productive faculties, men change th eir mode of p roduction and with the mode of p roduction all the economic relations which are merely the necessary relations of this particular mode o f p roduction. This i s what M . Proudhon has not understood and still less dem onstrated. M. Proudhon, incapable of following the real movement of history, produces a phantasmagoria which p res umptuously claims to be dialectical . He does not feel it necessary to speak of .the seven· teenth, th e eighteenth or the nineteenth century, for his h istory proceeds in the misty realm of imagination and rises far above space and time. In short, it is not history but old Hegelian junk, i t is not p rofane history-a history of man-but sacred history-a history of ideas . From his point of view man is only the instrument o f which the idea o r the eternal reason makes use in order to unfold i tself. Th e evolutions of which M. Proudhon speaks are understood to be evolutions such as a re accomplished within the mystic womb o f the absolute idea . If you tear the veil from th isaP1ystical language, what it comes to is tha t M. Proudhon is offering you th e order in which economic categories arrange themselves inside h is own mind. It wi1l not require great exertion on my part to prove to you that it is the order of a very disorderly mind. The series of economic evolutions o f the eternal reason begins with division of labour. To M . Proudhon division of labour is a per. fectly simple th ing. But was not the caste regime also a particular division of labour? \Vas not the regime of the corporation.s a nother division of labour? And is not the divisio n o f labour under the system of manufacture, which in England begins i n the middle of the seventeenth century and comes to an end in the last part of the eighteenth, also totally different from the division of labour in large-scale, modern industry? M. Proudho n is so far from the truth that he neglects what even the p rofane economists attend to. When h e talks about division of labour he does not feel it necessary to mention the world market. Good . Yet must not the division of labour in the fourteenth and fifo teenth century, when there were still n o colonies, when America did not as yet exist for Europe, and Eastern Asia only existed for her through the medium of Constantinople, have been fundamentally different from what it was in the seventeenth century when colonies were already developed .
Society and Economy in History
1 39
And that is not all . Is th e whole inner organisation of nations, are a ll their international relations anything else tha n the expression of a particular division of labour? And must not these change when t he division of labour changes? M. Proudhon has so little understood the problem of the division of labour that he never even mentions th e separation of town and country, which took place in Germany, for instance, from the ninth to the twel f th century. Th us, to M. Proudhon, this separation is an eternal law since he knows neither its origin nor its develo p ment. All through his book he speaks as if this creation of a particular mode of p roduction would endure until the end of time. All that 1\1 . Proudhon says about the division of labour is only a summary, and moreover a very superficial and incomplete summary, of "" hat Adam Smith and a th ousand others have said before him . The second evolution is machinery. Th e connection between the division of labour and machinery is entirely mystical to M. Proud h o n . Each kind of division of la bour had its specific instruments of production. Between the middle of the seventeenth and th e middle of the eighteenth century, for instance, people did not make every thing by h a n d . They had instruments, and very complicated ones at that, s uch as looms, ships, levers, etc. Th us there is nothing more absurd than to derive machinery from division of labou r i n general . I may also remark, by the way, that M. Proudhon has understood very little the historical origin of mach inery, but has still less under stood its development. One can say that up to the year 1 82 5 the period of the first general crisis-the demands of consumption in general increased more rapidly than production, and the develop ment of machinery was a necessary consequence of the needs of the market. Since 1 82 5, the i n vention and a pplication of machinery has been sim p ly the result of the war between workers and employers. But this is only true of England. As for the European nations, they were driven to adopt machinery owing to English c ompetition l;>oth in their h ome markets and on the world marke t. Finally, in North America the introduction of machinery was due both to competi tion with oth er countries and to lack of hands, that is, to the ' dis proportion between the population of North America and its industrial needs . From these facts you can see what sagacity Mon sieur Proudhon develops when he conj ures up the s pectre of compe tition as the third evolution, the a n tithesis to machinery! Lastly and in general, it is altogether a bsurd to make machinery an economic category alongside with division of labour competi tion, credit, etc. Machinery is no more a n economic category than the ox which draws the ploug h . The application o f machinery in the present day is one of the relations of our p resent economic system, but the way -
,
1 40
The Early Marx
in which machinery is utilised is totally distinct from the machinery itself. Powder is powder whether used to wound a man or to dress his wounds. *
*
*
1\1 Proudhon, mainly because he lacks the historical knowledge, has not perceived that as men develop their productive faculties, that is, as they live, they develop certain relations with one another and that the nature of these relations must necessarily change with the change and growth of the productive faculties . H e has not per ceived that economic categories are only abstract expressions of these actual relations and only remain true while these relations exist. He therefore falls into the error of the bourgeois economists, who regard these economic categories as eternal and not a s histori cal laws which are only laws for a particular historical development, for a definite development of the productive forces . Instead, there fore, of regarding the political-economic categories as abstract expressions of the real, transitory, historic social relations, Monsieur ProudlJ On, thanks to a mystic inversion, sees i n the real relations only embodiments of these abstractions. These abstractions them selves are formulas which have been slumbering in the heart of God the Father since the beginning of the world. *
*
*
1\Jonsieur Proudhon has very well grasped the fact tha t men pro duce cloth, linen, silks, and it is a great merit on his part to have grasped this small amount! \Vhat he has not grasped is that these men, according to their abilities, also produce the social relations amid which they prepare cloth and linen. Still less has he under stood that men, who produce their social relations in accordance with their material productivity, also produce ideas, categories, that is to say the abstract ideal expressions of these same social relation s. Thus t h e categories a r e no more eternal than t h e relations they express. They are historical and transitory p roducts. To M. Proud hon, on the con trary, abstractions, categories a re the primordial cause. According to him they, and not men, make h istory. The abstraction, the category taken as such, i . e . , apart from men and their material activities, is of course immortal, unchangeable, unmoved; it is only one form of the being of pure reason; which is only another way of saying that the abstraction as such is abstract. An admirable tautology! Thus, regarded as categories, economic re1'a tions for M . Proudhon are eternal form!ll�s without origin or progress. *
*
*
M. Proudhon is therefore necessarily doctrinaire. To him the h is� torical movement, which is turning the present-day world upside down, reduces itself to the problem of discovering the correct eq ui-
Society and Economy in History
141
librium, the synthesis, o f two bourgeois thoughts . A n d so t h e clever fellow by virtue of his subtlety discovers the hidden thought of God, the unity of two isolated thoughts-which are only isolated because M. Proudh on has isolated them from practical life, from present-day production, which is the combination of the realities which they express . In place of the great historical movement aris ing from the conflict between the productive forces already acquired by men and their social relations, which no longer correspond to these productive forces; in place of the terrible wars which are being prepared between the different classes within each nation and between different nations; in place of the practical and violent action of the masses by which alone these conflicts can be resolved -in place of this vast, prolonged and complicated movement, Mon sieur Proudhon supplies the whimsical motion of his own head. So it is the men of learning that make h istory, the men who know how to purloin God's secret thoughts. Th e common people have only to apply their revelations . You will now understand why M. Proudhon is the declared enemy of every political movemen t . The solution of present problems does not lie for him i n public action but in the dialectical rotations of h is own head. Since to him the categories are the motive force, i t is not necessary to change practical life in order to change the categories . Q uite the contrary. One must change the categories and the consequence will be a change in the existing society. I n his desire to reconcile the contradictions Monsieur P roudhon does not even as k if t h e very basis of those contradictions must not be overth rown. He is exactly like the political doctrinaire who wants to have the king and the chamber of deputies and the chamber of peers as integral parts of social life, as eternal categories . All he is looking for is a new formula by which to establish an equilibrium between these powers whose equilibrium consists precisely i n the actual movement in which one power is now the conqueror and now the slave of the other. Thus in the eighteenth century a num ber of mediocre minds were busy finding the true formula which would bring the social estates, nobility, king, parliament, etc., into equilibrium, and they woke up one morning to find that there was in fact no longer any king, parliament or nobility. The true equilibrium in this antagonism was the overthrow of all the social relations which served as a basis for these feudal existences and for the antagonisms of these feudal existences. B ecause M. Proudhon places eternal ideas, the categories of pure reason, on the one side and h uman beings and their practical life, which, according to him is the application of these categories, on the other, one finds with h im from the beginning a dualism between life and ideas, between soul and body, a dualism which recurs in many forms . You can see now that this antagonism is nothing b u t
1 42
The Early Marx
the incapacity of M. Proudhon to understand the profane origin and the profane history of the categories which he deifies . l'vly letter is already too l ong for me to speak of the absurd case which M. Proudhon puts up against communism. For the moment yo u will grant me that a man who has not understood the present state of society may be expected to understand still less the move ment which is ten ding to overthrow it, and the literary expressions of this revolutionary movement. The sole point on which I a m i n complete agreement with Mon sieur Proudhon is in his dislike for sentimental socialistic day dreams. I had already, before him, drawn much enmity upon myself by ridiculing this sentimental, utopian, mutton-h eaded socialism . B u t is not M. Proudhon strangely deluding h i mself when he sets up his petty-bourgeois sentimentality-I am referring to his declama tions about home, conj ugal love and all such banalities-in opposi tion to socialist sentimentality, which in Fourier, for example goes much deeper than the pretentious platitudes of our worthy Proudhon? * * *
Theses
on
Feuer bach
KARL MARX Marx w r o t e the "Theses ' o n Feuerbach" i n t h e spring of 1 8 4 5 as he a n d
Eng els were starting their collaborative work The German Ideology. M o r e
than forty y e a r s l a t e r , E n g e l s f o u n d them i n o n e of t h e n o tebooks that h a d come into his possess i o n after his friend died . He published t h e m a s a n a p pendix to his essay o f 1 8 8 8 o n Ludwig F euerbach a n d t h e End o f Classical German Philosophy, and described them in the foreword to this essay as
" the brilliant germ of the new world outlook , " They have fascinated Marx scholars ever since, a n d a n extensive literature o f exegesis o f the "Theses" has accumulated. The eleventh thesis, i n which Marx proclaims it the task of philosophy not simply t o interpret but t o change the world, i s o n e of his most frequently quoted statements. Before resorting to commentaries, however, the reade r ' should apply him self to Marx's own amplification o f the "Theses" in Part I of The German Ideology, which follows this selecti o n .
Engels m a d e a f e w s m a l l changes i n t h e "Theses" when h e published them in 1 8 8 8 : he added the phrase "in Robert Owen, for example," i n par· entheses, a t the end of the first paragraph o f Thesis ' I I I ; italicized "social
product" i n Thesis VII; italicized "contemplative" a n d placed quotation
marks around "civil society" i n Thesis I X , The version presented below is Marx's.
I The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism-that of Feuerbach included�is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only i n the form of the object or o f contemplation, but not as h uman sensuous activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence it happened that the active side, in contradistinction to materialism, was developed by idealism-but only abstractly, since, of course, idealism does not know real, sensuous activity as such . Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects, but h e does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. Hence, in Das Wesen des Christentums, he regards the theoreti cal attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and fixed only in its dirty-judaical manifestation . Hence he does not grasp the significance of " revolutionary," of practical critical, activity. 1 43
1 44
The Early Marx
II The question whether objective truth can be attributed to h uman thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical ques tion . l\1an must prove the truth, that is, the reality and power, the this-sided ness of his thinking i n practice. The dispute over the real ity or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question .
III The materialist doctrine that men are products 0 f circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. Hence. this doctrine necessarily arrives at dividing society into two parts, one of which is superior t o society . The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolu tionising practice.
IV Feuerbach starts out from the fact of religious self-alienation, of the duplication of the world into a religious, imaginary world and a real one. His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis . He overlooks the fact that after completing this work, the chief thing still remains to be done . For the fact that the secu lar basis detaches itself from itself and establishes itself in the clouds a s a n independent realm can only be explained by the cleav age and self-contradictions within . this secular basis . The latter must itself, therefore, first be understood in its contradiction and then, by the removal o f t h e contradiction, revolutionised in prac tice . Thus, for instance, after the earthly family is dis covered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must then itself be criti cised in theory and revolutionised in practice.
V Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thinking, appeals to sen suous contemplation; but he does not conceive sensuousness as practical, human-sensuous activity.
Theses
on
145
F euerbach
VI Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the h uman essence. B ut the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations. Feuerbach, wh o does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence, is consequently compelled : ( 1 ) To abstract from the historical process and to fix the reli giou s sentiment as something by itself and to presuppose an abstract -isolated- human individual. ( 2 ) The human essence, therefore, can with him be compre hended only as "genus," as an internal, dumb generality which merely naturally unites the many individuals.
VII Feuerbach, consequently, does not see that the "religious senti men t " is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual whom he analyses belongs i n reality to a particular form of society.
VI I I Social life i s essentially practical. All mysteries which mislead theory into mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.
IX The highest point attained by contemplative materialism, that is, materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as praCtical activity, is the contemplation of single individuals in civil society.
X The standpoint of the old materialism is "civil" society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or socialised humanity.
XI The phi losophers have only interpreted the world, ways; the point, however, is to change it.
m
various
The German Ideology : Part I KARL MARX Marx and Engels wrote The German Ideology i n 1 84 5-46 in order ( as � "to settle accounts with our erstwhile philosophical
Marx later recalled )
conscience." H e further explained : "The manuscript, two large octavo vol umes, had long reached its place o f publication i n Westphalia when we re ceived the news that altered circumstances
did not allow o f its being
printed. Vie abandoned the manuscript to the gnawing criticism o f the mice, all the more willingly as we had achieved our self-clarification . " * The work was first published in
main
purpose
1 9 3 2 by the Marx
Engels Institute in Moscow. The original difficulty of publication was very probably connected with the fact that most of this very bulky work consisted of satirically written, rather arid polemics against Bruno Bauer, Max Stirner, Karl Griin, and oth ers. But Part I
( here
presented in full ) is a different matter. Although P.o
lemical at various points, it is basically a work of exposition. It gives every appearance of being the work for which the "Theses on Feuerbach" served as a n outline; hence w e may infer that it was written by Marx. It is, in es sence, a restatement, minus much of the German philosophical terminol ogy, of the theory o f history adumbrated in the manuscripts o f 1 84 4 . M arx now calls it the ' "materialist conception 'of history." It i s particularly valu able and important to the student of Marxist thought because Marx never again set down a comprehensive statement o f his theory o f history at such length and in such detail. This point is not contradicted by Engels' remark
i n the 1 8 8 8 foreword that the exposihon o f the materialist concep t ion of
history i n The German Ideology "proves only how incomplete o u r knowl edge o f economic history still was a t that time . "
T h e German Ideology h a s recently appeared in a re-edited ve r si'On con
taining several previously unknown pages o f the manuscript that were dis covered in the International Institute of Social History i n Amsterdam, where the original manuscript is kept. Part I appears here i n this new and fuller version as translated from the German and edited by S. Ryazanskaya, and published in English by the Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, in 1 9 6 4 . I n preparing this neW translation, the translator made use o f an earlier English translation made by VI. Lough and edited by R. Pascal.
*
Preface to pp . 5-6 .
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. 1 46
See
above,
The German Ideology
147
Feuerbach : Opposition of the Material istic and I dealistic O u tlook As we hear from German ideologists, Germany has in the last few years gone through an unparalleled revolution . The decomposi tion of the Hegelian philosophy, which began with Strauss, has developed into a universal ferment into which all the "powers of the past" are swep t . In the general chaos mighty empires have arisen only to meet with immediate doom, heroes have emerged momentarily only to be hurled back into obscurity by bolder and stronger rivals . It was a revolution beside which the French Revolu tion was child's play, a world struggle beside which the struggles of the Diadochi appear insignifica nt. Principles ousted one another, heroes of the mind overthrew each other with unheard-o f rapidity, and i n tl!� three years 1 842-4 5 more of the knast was swe p. t away in Germany than at other times intfiree centuries . ... All this is supposed to have taken place in the realm of pure thought. Certainly it is an interesting event we are dealing with : the putrescepc.e o f the absolute spiri t . \\Then the last spark of its life had failed, the various co m ponents of this caput mortuuml began to decompose, entered into new combinations and formed new sub stance s . The industrialists of philosophy, who till then had lived on the exploitation of the absolute spirit, now seized upon the new combinations. Each with all possible zeal set about retailing h is ap p ortioned share. This naturally gave rise to competition, which, to start with, was carried on in moderately staid bourgeois fashion. Later when the German market was glutted, and the commodity in spite of all efforts found no response in the world market, the busi ness was spoiled in the usual German manner by Jabricated and fictitious production, deterioration in quality, adulteration of the raw materials, falsification of labels, fictitious purchases, bill-jobbing and a credit system devoid of any real basis. The competition turned into a bitter struggle, which is now being extolled and inter preted to us as a revolution of world significance, the begetter of the most prodigious results and achievements . If we wish to rate at its true value this philosophic charlatanry, which awakens even in the breast of the honest German citizen a glow of national pride, if we wish to bring out clearly the pettiness, the parochial narrowness of this whole Young-Hegelian movement •.•._
1. Literal l y : "dead head " ; a term used in chemistry f o r the residuum left after
_ ___ � . . _ _ . _ ,_ . . .. .•
distillation ; due."
. . _ . " _ _ _ _ , _ . _ __ . . _� . . _
here :
"remainder,"
4,
•• • • • • •• • •
"resi-
1 48
The Early Marx
and in particular the tragicomic contrast between the illusions of these heroes about their achievements and the actual achievements themselves, we must look at the whole spectacle from a standpoint beyond the frontiers of Germany. A. IDEOLOGY IN GENERAL, GERMAN IDEOLOGY IN PARTICULAR German criticism has, right up to its latest efforts, never quitted the realm of philosophy. Far from examining its general philo sophic premises, the whole body of its inquiries has actually sprung from the soil of a definite philosophical system, that of Hegel . Not only in their answers but in their very questions there was a mystifi cation. This , dependence on Hegel is the reason why not one of these modern critics has even attempted a comprehensive criticism of the Hegelian system, however much each professes to have advanced beyond Hegel. Their polemics against Hegel and against one another are confined to this-each extracts one side of the Hegelian system and turns this against the whole system as well as against the sides extracted by the others. To begin with they extracted pure unfalsified Hegelian categories such as "substance" and "self-consciousness," later they desecrated these categories with more secular names such as "species," "the Unique," "Man," etc. ,The entire body of German philosophical criticism from Strauss to Stirner is confined to criticism of religious conceptions . The crit ics started from real religion and actual theology. What religious consciousness and a religious conception really meant was deter mined variously as they went along. Their advance consisted in s ubsuming the allegedly dominant metaphysical, political, juridical, moral and other conceptions under the class of religious or theolog ical , conceptions; and similarly in pronouncing political, juridical, moral consciousness a s religious or theological, and the political, juridical, moral man-"man" in the last resort-as religious. The dominance of religion was taken for granted . Gradually every domi nant relationship was pronounced a religious relationship and trans formed into a cult, a cult of law, a cult of the State, e tc . On all sides it was only a question of dogmas and belief in dogmas . The world was sanctified to an ever· increasing extent till a t last our � venerable Saint Max was able to canonise it e n bloc and thus dis� .' pose of it once for all . The Old Hegelians had comprehended everything as soon as it was reduced to an Hegelian logical category. The Young Hegelians criticised everyth ing by attributing to it religious c � nceptions or by pronouncing it a theological matter. The Young Hegelians are in ' agreement with the Old Hegelians i n the ir belief in the rule of reli-
The German Ideology
1 49
gion, of concepts, of a universal principle in the existing world. Only, the one party attacks this dominion as usurpation, while the other extols i t as legitimate. Since the Young Hegelians consider conceptions, thoughts, ideas, i n fact all the products of consciousness, to which they attrib ute a n independent existence, as the real chains of men ( j ust as the Old Hegelians declared them the true bonds of human society ) it is evident that the Young Hegelians have to fight only against these illusions of the consciousness . Since, according t o their fantasy, the relationships of men, all their doings, their chains and their limita tions are products of their consciousness, the Young Hegelians logi cally p u t to men the moral postulate of exchanging their present consciousness for human, critical or egoistic consciousness, and thus of removing their limitations . This demand to change conscious ness amounts to a demand to interpret reality in another way, i .e . , t o recognise i t by m e a n s o f another interpretation . T h e Young Hegelian ideologists, in spite of their allegedly "world-shatter�ng" statements, are the staunchest conservative s . The most recent of them have found the correct expression for their activity when they declare they are only fighting against "phrases." They forget, how ever, that to these phrases they themselves are only opposing other phrases, and that they are in n o way combating the real existing world when they are merely combating the phrases of this world. The only results which this philosophic criticism could achieve were a few ( and at that thoroughly one-sided ) elucidations of Christianity from the point of view of religious history; all the rest of their assertions are only further embellishments of their claim to have furnished, in these unimportant elucidations, discoveries of universal importance. I t has not occurred to any one of these philosophers to i nquire into the connection of German philosophy with German reality, the relation of their criticism to their own m aterial surroundings. T h e premises from which we begin a r e not arbitrary ones, n o t dogmas, but �e�l premises from which abstraction c a n
__
-.
1 50
The Early Marx
climatic and so on . The writing of history must always set out from these natural bases and their modification in the course of history through the action of men . Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by reli gion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce theIr means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical ' organTsaliori." B y 'p ro d ucing their means of s ub sis t ence men are indie rectly producing their �.f.t��. m a t eligIJ.jfe . The way in which m e n produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature of th e actual means of s u b si stence they fin d in existence and have to reproduce. Th is mode of produc tion must ' not be considered simply as being the reproduction of the p hys ical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a definite fo r m of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a defin ite mode of life on their part . As individuals express their life, so they are . What they are, therefore, co incides .y..:! !!�.J1I.�ir:J:lr�(tu-ctiQl1, JJQth with _w��t they P.IQ.Gucf! .a.nd wi th how they Erodu.�.!. The nature of individuals tl��ls dep eI1c:l s... 9J! .th � ):Il_a.� �l a f cciuqi tiQI U : deterrrlCnlng-fhejr'prQdu.ciiQu . .. This production only makes its appearance with · the increas� population. In its turn this presupposes the i��'!T�()l1!�_�_ [V erkehr 1 onIioivia uals with one another. The form of this intercourse is again Qt:!!�!�ined by p ro du ction . ' Th e rcla ti"on s of different nations among themselves depend upon the extent to which each has developed its productive fo rces, the division of labour and internal intercourse. This statement is generally recognised. B u t not only the relation of one nation to others, but also the whole in ternal structure of the nation itself depends on the stage of development reached by its production and its internal and external intercourse. How far the productive forces of a nation are developed is shown most manifestly by the degree to which the division of labour has been carried. �ach_ n�w.J��o � uc t�v_eJ Q[��, insofar as it is not m erely a quantitative extension of pro::
ductive forces already known ( for instance the bringing into culti .fu r.the'!...9-_e.!:�lQpmeJ:lt.. . of v at ion of fresh land ) , . cause the division . . -. . -. �§... . '. ' .. - . - - --- - . o f labour. . r ' The dj!: (�ig}:!._of labour inside a nation leads at first to the separa tion of industr {iirand comm e rci Cl:L fro m agricultllral J.?p.D_ur, and ' hence t ci the sepa ratio n of town and country and to _ the conflict . o f their interests. I ts f u r the r developme"ilf l e a ds to the separatloncl rijriielcliniQ rI1jll.9.�s�rjaJ.labQl)r, At the same time through the �Q division of labour inside these various branches there develop var ious div isions among the individuals co-operating in definite kinds of labour. The relative position of these i nd i vid u a l groups is deter-
The German Ideology
151
mined b y the methods employed i n agriculture, industry a n d com merce ( patriarchalism, slavery, estates, classes ) . These same condi tions are to be seen ( given a more developed intercourse ) in the relations of different nations to one another. The various stages of development in th e division of labour are just so many different forms o f ownership, i . e . , the existing stage in the division of la bour determines also the relations of individuals to one another with reference to the material, instrument, and· prod uct o f labour. The first form of ownership is tribal [StammeigentumJ owner ship. It corresponds to the llll devel
.-!
1 52
The Early Marx
tory. Here we must limit ourselves to the chief points and take, therefore, only the most striking example--:the destruction of an old civilisation by a barbarous people and the resulting formation of an entirely new organisation of society. ( Rome and the barbari ans; feudalism and Gaul; the Byzantine Empire and the Turks . ) \Vith the conquering barbarian people war itself i s still, a s indi cated above, a regular form of intercourse; which is the more eagerly exploited as the increase in population together with the tra ditional and, for it, the only possible, crude mode of production gives rise to the need for new means of production. In Italy, on the other hand, the concentration of landed property (caused not only by buying-up and indebtedness but also by inheritance, since loose living being rife and marriage rare, the old families gradually died out and their possessions fell into the hands of a few ) and its con version into grazing-land ( caused not only by the usual economic forces still operative today but by the importation of plundered and tribute corn and the resultant lack of demand for I talian corn ) brought about the almost total disappearance of the -free population. The very slaves died out again and again, and had constantly to be replaced by ne\v ones. Slavery remained the basis of the whole pro ductive system . The plebeians, midway between freemen and slaves, never succeeded in becoming more than a proletarian rabble. Rome indeed never became more than a city; its connection with the provinces was almost exclusively political and could, therefore, easily be broken again by political events . With the development of private property, we find here for the first time the same conditions which we shall find again, only on a more extensive scale, with modern private property. On the one hand, the concentration of private property, which began very early in Rome ( as the Licinian agrarian law proves ) and proceeded very rapidly 'from the time of the civil wars and especially under the Emperors; on the other hand, coupled with this, the transformation of the pl�e..iEJ) small peasantry into a proletariat, which, however, owing To its intermediate position between propertied citizens and slaves, never achieved an independent development . The thin;l.-.tQ�.!.rLQJ._Q�!l�Is..hip_ is feudal or estate. property. If antiquity started out from the town and its little territory, the Migc:lk_Agf!.s �t�!.ted �u.� f�Q.I!Uh!! countly, This different starting point was determined by the sparseness of the population at that time, which was scattered over a large area and which received no large increase from the conquerors. In contrast to Greece and Rome, feudal development at the outset, therefore, extends over a much wider territory, prepared by the Roman conquests and the spread of agriculture at first associated with the m . The last centu ries of the declining Roman Empire and its conquest by the barbar..
..
The German Ideology
153
ians destroyed a number of productive forces; agriculture had declined, industry had decayed for wan t of a market, trade had died out or been violently suspended, the rural and urban popula tion had decreased. From these conditions and the mode of organi sation of the conquest determined by them, fe.!!..ns!jtiiHOIi: Like tribal and communal ownership, i t IS ba�t,!d .again on a commu !l� ty; l:)Ut th e._d�r�c.�!y_ p!.:o.duciI1g class standing ove� aga in st it is not, a s in the case of the a ncient community, !..ht: �!aves, �t _toe �Ilserfed smalLpeasallt.!:Y.: As soon as feudalism is fully developed, there also arises antagonism to the towns . The hierarchical struc ture of landownership, and the armed bodies of retainers associated with it, gave the nobility power over the serfs. This feudal organisa tion was, j ust as much as the ancient communal ownership, an ass�iati0Il... ;IK��Ilst _a_���j e�.t�4 pr�dll�ing <:lass� but the form of asso ciation and the relati on to the direct producers were different because of the gi�J(!nU;�msJjti()!.l�.�f production . Thi� {elldjll sy�teU1 o f m llclOWI.u:rship· had Jts cOlll!terpart i? _�4e towns in the shape 9Lc.m:PQrative property, the feudal organisation QI. _t!? des . Here property consisted chIefl y in the Ia hour of eaCh ·indi vidual person_ The necessity for association against the organised robber nobility, the need for communal covered markets in an age when the industrialist was a t the same time a merchant, the grow ing competition of the escaped serfs swarming into the rising towns, the feudal structure of the whole country : these combined to bring abo ut the _guilds. The gradually accumulated small capital of individual craftsmen --and their stable numbers, as against the growing population, evolved the relation of j ou rneyman and apprentice, which brought into being in the towns a hierarchy simi lar to that in the country. Thus the chief form of _p--fO-p....e.rty during the feudal epoch con sisted on the one hand of landed p roperty with serf labour chained to it, and on the other of the labour of the individual with small �apital commanding the labour of jo�ine YineIi:. Th� �rganisati()Ji -oT both -- \vas determined by the restrictecl G.QlJditio!1�_ ()f p.r�duction---:-t he small-scale and primitive cultivation of the land, alld-Ihe craft type of industry. There was little division of labour in the heyday of feudalism. Each country bO re· ln· �tself the antithesis of t()��Il _ and country; the division into estates was certainly stro ngly marked; but apart from the differentiation of princes, nobility, clergy and peasants i n the country, and m asters, journeymen, apprentices and soon also the rabble of casual labourers in the towns, no division of importance took place. In agriculture it was rendered difficult by the strip-system, beside which the cottage industry of the peasants themselves emerged. In industry there was _ __
_ _
__
__ _
1 54
The Early Marx
no division of labour at all in the individual trades themselves, and very little between them . The separation of industry and commerce was found already in existence in older towns; in the newer it only developed later, when the towns entered into mutual relations . The grouping of larger territories into feJ-ldaJ-. killgd.Q�!!s was a necessity for the landed nobility as for the town s . The organisation of the ruling class, the !l()g.ility, had, therefore, everywhere a .illQU arch at its head . The fact is, therefore, that definite individuals who are produc tively active in a definite way enter into these definite social and political relations. Empirical observation m ust in each separate instance bring out empirically, and without any mystification and speculation, the connection of the social and political structure with production. The social structure and the State are continually evolving out of the life process of definite individuals, but of indi viduals, not as they may appear in their own or other people's imagination, but as they really are; i .e., as they operate, produce materially, and hence as they work under definite material limits, presuppositions and conditions independent of their will. The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their ma terial b ehaviour. The same applies to mental pro duction as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, reli gion, metaphysics, etc ., of a peopl e. Men are the producers _of their conceptions, id�:Is, etc-real, activc 'men, as they are con, gi�i9J:leg by _a defi�lte d�ve10pment of. lhei"r:-productlve forces ' and�QLth i inte!collrse corres ponding to these, up to its furthest forms . C()!l� .�c}.�·USl}��.�_ can n'ever be anything else than conscious exist�ri.c:i.; and the existence of men is their actual life-process . If in all ideology mena�d their " Ci�cu�stances appeai-- ilpside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises j ust as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-proces s. I n direct contrast to German philosophy which descends Jr9E.!. �,�aY.\!,!;UQ.. em:th,_ here we··asceif(r:�!"§.ili,::Ia!,tb.J'? .h�:Ix.e.p. . That is to say, we do not set out from . what men say, imagine, conceive, n or from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order ,�to arrive at men in the flesh . We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the develop ment of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, subli mates of their material life-process, which , i s empir.��!h'_.Y.�r.lfja1ili: an�, lJ.,?IJn.d to _rr!���r;�l j)relnjs�� : Morality , r�Ugion, ,. 1}l�,t.a'p�sic�, all Hie' rest of ideology and their corn�spo-nding forms of � onsc�o �� �ess, . _ _ ..
_ _
..
The German Ideology
155
th us no longer retain . !h.e semblance of independence . They have no history, n o developmen C but men," ' developing their material produ ction and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the p roducts of their think in g . Lif�. (s not �etermine(L.by cOI.Jsciousness, but co��ciousness by life . In the first method of approach the starting-point is conscious n ess taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness. This method of approach is not devoid of premises. It starts out from the real premises and does not abandon them for a moment. I ts p remises are men, not in any fantastic isolation and rigidity, b u t in their actual, empirically perceptible process of development under definite conditions . As soon as this act±�r,e Ijf"'j�!.'1£!1ss is described, history ceases to be a collection of dead facts as It is with 'the empiricists ( themselves still abstract ) , or an imagined activity of imagined subjects, as with the idealists. \Vhere speculation ends-in real life-there real, positive science begins : the representation of the practical activity, of the practical, p rocess of deveToprii e nTof"meri. . - EmptY' talk abci ut consciousness ceases,' ane r -real kno"wledge '-has 'to take its place. When reality is depicted, philQ�Q12hx_ as an independent branch of knowledge loses its medium of existence . At the best its _p}ace ��,I.:1 0!l!y.be t�k�n .by a summing:up' of the most general results, abstractions which arise from the observation o f t h e nistOrical deve16pment of men . Viewed 'aparT "fi-om real history, these' abstractions h ave in themselves no value whatsoever. T�e}' can only serve !.Q f��ilg?��.!ll� .�r.�E.g�m_�E..! . , 0!.-.h. !�t9rical m�ter(aL -t o ind:bite th�,'s�q�e_��e of i�s ,�eE.a!�.t.e. �t��a: B u t the s y �,L���E _ � ff
History
Since we are dealing with the Germans, who are devoid of premises, we must begin by stating the first premise of all human existence and, therefore, of all history, the pre.Pl!s.!:, namely, tha t _J.!l�,l! . must be in a p<>si t ! on to live in order to b� able to "make ,
I
\
1 56
The Early Marx
.hi��ory :2 But life involves before everything else eating and drink ing, a habitation, clothing and many other things. J ne first histori cal act is thus the ��':l�!�0I?- of the mean� �g satisfy th�Se.jl��9s; the prodtlct!9n. .. of.1�!a_t.�r.i� .lli� itselC And in deed this is an histori cal act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain h uman life. Even when the sensuous world is reduced to a minimum, to a stick as with Saint B runo, it presup p oses the action of producing the stick . Therefore in any interpreta tion of history one has first of all to observe this fundamental fact in all its significance and all its implications and to accord it its due importance. It is well known that the Germans l)ave never done this, and they h ave never, therefore, had -a n ear.�hly-..ill!.sis for history and consequen-ffyne,'-er- -a historian . · tlie· French and the English, even i f they have conceived the relation of this fact with so-called history only in an extremely one-sided fashion, particularly as long as they remained in the toils of political ideology, have nevertheless made the first attempts to give the writing of history a materialistic basis by being the first to write histories of civil society, of corny merce and industry. C The second point is that the satisfaction of the first need ( the action o f satisfying, and the instrument of satisfaction which has been acquired ) leads t o E.�\¥ .Jl�e.d£ and this proc!uction_QL.!!� �ee�s is t�e first historical !lC:!.! Here we recognise immediately the spiritual ancestry of the great historical wisdom of the Germans w.ho, when they run out of positive material and when they can serve up neither theological nor political nor literary rubbish, assert that this is not history a t all, but the "prehistoric era . " They do not, however, enlighten us as to how we proceed from this nonsen sical "prehistory" to history proper; although, on the other hand, in their historical speculation they seize upon this "prehistory" with especial eagerness because they imagine themselves safe there from interference on the part of "crude facts," and, at the same time, be cause there they can give full rein to their speculative impulse and . set up and knock down hypotheses by the thousand. q . ) The third circumstance which, from the very outset, enters into .- ; historical development, is that men, who daily remake their own life, begin to make other men, to propagate their kind : the relation between man and woman, parents and children, the fa!!':ib'. Th� family, which to begin with is the .onlY socI�L���!Lonslilp , be_c:qrn��. later, when increased needs create new social relatIons and the increased population new needs, a supordil1at�_ ol1� ( except in Ger many ) , a n d must then be · treated and analysed according to the ..
...
.
'.
.
2. Margina i note b y Marx : "Hegel. Geological, hydrographical, etc., condi-
t i o n s.
Human
bodies.
Needs,
la bour."
The German Ideology
1 57
existing empirical data, not according to "the concept of the family, " as is the custom in Germany.3 These three aspects of social activity are not of course to be taken as three different stages, but just as three aspects or, to make it clear to the Germans, three · "moments, " · which have e�sJ_eJ:L siI!1ultan� o usly �i'1.c�_.!h�.. dQ:.vn of � histerr y- nd fhc"-fi eri � and which still . <Jssert themselves i� i� is. ---rsrm - ' .. ,' , . , . , . - - ..
to-iJ19day..
The producJiQ.TI_9JJife, both of one's own in labour and of fresh h ' life in procreation, now appears as a .double relationship : on the one hand as a natural, on the other as a social relationship . By social we - iiiiclerstiiiid Hie co-operation of several i nd i v i dual s , no matter under what conditions, in what manner and to what end. It follows from this that a certain mode , of production, or industrial stage, is a l w ays combined w"lHl a- certain mod e of co-operation, or social stage" and tJili:mode of c o-op eration ' is itself a "productive force . " Further, that the multitude of productive forces accessible ' t o m en determines the nature of society, hence, tha t t h e ' :h.!stor:.y..i ..9 h Ul�;J. !lity" m_ust ..alw<1y.s bc-.Ji tudierl. and treated in relatiol,1 to the . �{sJ:.��y.. of inc!l!�t�y.!:l!!4_. �xchange . But i t is also clear how in Ger many it is impossible to ..vote this sort o f history, because the Ger mans lack not only the necessary power of comprehension and the m aterial but also the "evidence of their senses, " for across the Rhine you cannot have any experience of these things since h i st or y has stopped h appen in g . Thus it is quite obvious from the start that there exists a materi;ilistic conn�c:: h()n_. .of. men with Olle .!l.!l.oJl:J � r, which is determil��d bv thelf ll eeds and their mode of Eroduction, i · · and whicT;-ls-as-ol�s-men th e niselves. This c6ilnec- i o� is e�'er taking on n e w forms, and thus preseJ!t§ .il: . ' :hi�tory" independ,eJltly anne ex�sfence --ora�y -i>olltlcai"oi 'ieligious' nO ll sense which would especially hold men together. Only now, a ft e r having considered four moments, four aspects of _ _
3. The b u i l d i n g of houses. With �avages each family has as a matter o f course
its own cave o r hut like the separate family tent of the nomads. This sep arate domestic economy is made only the m o r e necessary by the further de velopment of private property. With the agricultural peoples a communal domestic economy i s just as impossible as a communal cultivation o f the soil . A g,reat advance was the building of towns. In all previous periods, how ever, the abolition of individual econ omy, which is inseparab l e from the ab olition o f private property, was impos s i ble for the simple reason that the material conditions governing it were not present. The setting-up o f a com munal domestic economy presupposes the development of machinery, of the
use o f natural forces a n d of many other productive forces-e . g . , of water-supplies, o f gas-lighting, steam heating, etc., the removal [of . .the antagonism] of town and country. Without these conditions a com m u nal economy would not in itself fo�m a new productive force ; lacking any material basis and resting o n a purely theoretical foundation, it would be a mere freak and would end in nothing more than a monastic economy.-What was possible can be seen in the towns brought about by condensation and the erection o f communal buildings f o r var ious definite purposes (prisons, bar racks, etc_ ) . That the abolition of indi v i d u a l economy is i n separable from t h e a b o l i t i o n o f the f a m i l y i s s e l f-evident.
[Marx]
158
The Early Marx
the primary historical relationships, do we find that man also pos sesses "£��"��i.91,l"�Q esf';4 but, even so, n ot inherent, not "pure" con sciousness. From the start the "spirit" is afflicted with the curse of being "burdened" with matter, which here makes its appearance in the form of agitated layers of air, sounds, in short, of language . Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical conscious ness that exists also for other men, "' ana- for thciT"reasoIi" alone it -�e�ny exists for m e p ersonally as well; lan g ua g e, like consciousness, only arises from th e need, the necessity, of intercourse with other m en . \Vhere there exists a relationship, it exists -for me : the animal does not enter into "relations" with anything, it does not enter into any relation at all . For the animal, its relation to others does not exist a s a relation. Consciousness is, therefore, from the very begin ning a social produCt, and remains so as long as men exist at all . C onscicilisriess iii at "first, of course, merely consciousness con�r!!!ng the immediate sei1"suO"us environment " and consciouSness-' orthe lim " " ited- c"6n�"�ci�QQ�-�Yiih" �th�; p� � so ��_ and things outside the individ ual who" is growing self-coiIsdous . At the same time it is conscious ness of n ature, which fi rst appears to men as a completely alien, all-powerful and unassaifa'Dle force, with which men's relations "are purely animal and by which they are overawed like beasts; it is thus a I!-gL
___
4 . Marginal n o t e by Marl[ : " M e n h a v e h i s t o r y because t h e y m u s t produce t h e i r life, and because t h e y must pro duce i t moreover i n a certain w a y : t h i s
is determined by
their physical organi
sation ; their consciousness mined in just the same way. "
is
deter
The German Ideology
159
virtue of natural predisposition (e.g., physical strength), needs, accidents, etc., etc. Division of labour only becomes truly such from the m��ent ���§a··.¥�!.iW-ti".?[ �a"terial �n.�.�(,!I!ta.LJ�J?gp'r.. appears.5 'Fromt11is moment onwards conscious ness can really Ratler"Itself that it is something other than consciousness of exist ing practice, that it .really represents something without represent-. ing s.omething real; fromriow on' consciousness is in a position to eIi-tancipate itself from the \\'orld and to proceed to the formation of "pure" theory, theology, philosophy, ethics, etc. But even if this t!Ieory, tlIeolQgy, phil��?p'hy,"�_thics, etc.,_cQrB<:s into.. c()n.!.r"a"�!ction �i.th the . �xistiI1g re��.ti()Il_s2" thisca' n only occur b�ca�lSe�!���K s?9��elati.ons .h!,!ve C?�e. i.'.!p ! C9!1JrgdictiQn .y;i t.h ex.istiI1g fq,r:�es Qt eroduction; this, moreover, can also occur in a particular national sphere'fo 'relations through the appearance of the contradiction, not within the national orbit, but between this national conscious ness and the practice of other nations,6 i.e., between the national and the general consciousness of a nation (as we see it now in Ger many). Moreover, it is quite immaterial what consciousness starts to do on its own: out of all such muck we get only the one inference that �l:!�s.e. .!h.r.IC<2!!.oments, the forces of pro�uction, the state of society, and consciousnesS:C-an and"must 'comeillto"contradicfion with' orie ..
..
__
another, '"beca;�e ·tiie-di�i�io;;·�Ti�bouT irii plies the possibility; nay
the-fact1lia-F'in"feilectu:if' 'and" mai:enar'actl'�ity-=-en J oymenf and labour, production and consumption-devolve on different individ uals, and that the only possibility of their not coming into contra diction lies in the negation in its turn of the division of labour. It is self-evident, moreover, that "spectres," "bonds," "the higher being," "concept," "scruple," are merely the idealistic, spiritual expression, the conception apparently of the isolated individual, the image of very empirical fetters and limitations, within which the mode of production of life and the form of intercourse coupled with it move. ?-�_t�,b..£!.1�, i� which all these .cQ!1.!r:adi:t�o� are . !Y:!�,!��_�!��t9.�_, ImplICit, and which III Its t u rn IS based on the natural dlVlSIOrI ·of labour in the family and the separation of society into individual. fa�..2E.P...Q,§� to one another, is given simul�Il�Cl.'-!�IY.�h�.gi�.ri.: "§f};?�! . �.!l(ljJ:.1dee<J."J.h.�_��g!!:.�J, (fis!��fiiiboii.,""both quantitative and qualitative, �U�bour and i��_P�EIlC!�, b.!;!!!c.t:..p.Io.p.erty: the nucleus; the first form:'o(wliictilies in the family, where wife and children are the slaves of the husband. This latent slavelylntfie-family, though still very crude, is thc_fir1!t P,���.!Yz. bureven at this early stage it corresponds perfectly to the definition of modern econo..
..
5, Marginal note by M a rx: "The first form o f ideologists, priests, is concurrent."
6. Marginal note by Marx: "Religion, The Germans and ideology as such."
,;
The Early Marx
mists who call it -.thejJower of disp��i!lKQ.Lth�l!!,�I,l.!:p-��e!. ()J others. Division of iabouraIld-private property are, moreover, iden � hcaCe�pressions: in the one the same thing is affirmed with reference to activity as is affirmed in the other with reference to the product of the activity. Further, the division of labour implies the contradiction between the interest of t1ie':separate' individual or the individual family and the communal illte-rest ofariil'dlvldii"ils who have intercourse with one another. And indeed, tliis'-commillial interest does not exist merely in the imagination, as the "general interest," but first of all in reality, as the mutual interdependence of the individuals among whom the labourTs- divide'& 'AlIef fiiially, the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natu ral society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particu lar and the common interest, as lol!,g, therefore, as .a�!iv!�L!� not voluntarily, but naturally, divfaed: !!!!.l!l's..QYDJ..il�ed:hec()mes�,aIi alien power o ppo'se d" to liim, \ylil c�' er.!slay�� . him in�teacLoLbcing controlledb}r'hirii':Foias'soon as the distribution of labour comes into'be;iig:"'eiich-man has a p�rticul?r,. eX9Ius.iy-<:uphereQLa.c.tivity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter', a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomp�i����d in a�y branch he wishes, society' regulates the general productiori"'iiiia-thus makes"it possibfe for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the eve ning, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic. This Jil£�tjQJ1,g! social a�,t��.!Y! this co���!i
i
,_,_._
.-
1 60
I
The German Ideology
161
are merely the illl,lsory forms in which the real struggles of the !iifferent classes are foughT out among one another (of this the German theoreticians-ha,;e-nof tne- hinte£ {iIllilig, although they have received a sufficient introduction to the subject in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher and Die heilige Familie). Fur ther, it follows that every class which is struggling for mastery, even when its domination, as is the case with the proletariat, postulates the abolition of the old form of society in its entirety and of domi nation itself, mu�t first conq uer for:its.elf pJ)litical powedn order to_ reyresent its interest in turn- as - the general interest, which in the - -fir�t ��ment it isforced t� dO: j�l st beca-use'in-dlviduals" seek onlr their .P?�tic_�I'!I_j!lterl;;g, which for them does not coincidewHli their communal interest (in fact the general is the illusory form of communal life), the latter will be imposed on them as an interest "alien" to them, and "independent" of them, as in its turn a partic ular, peculiar "general" interest; or they themselves must remain within this discord, as in democracy. On the other hand, too, the practical struggl� _QL !h.ese particular j!1J�r�t§, which constantly really run counter to the communal and illusory communal)f.l!et.. ests, makes practicCll intervention and control necessarvtlirough the , 'lfY�sQry_--j'g�rreral';-irrterest -in- the- torm of --the Stat � . The social power, i.e., the mi.iTtlpl� productive force, whlch-anses through (r") // the co-operation-of different' indIviduals-as'- it is determined by the division of labour, �Pl?-���§.. to these individuals, since their co-operation is not voluntary but has come about naturally, not as their own united power, but as an_�lien fo�s� e!i�.ti!!goutsi�e them, of the origin and goal of which they are ignorant, which theyfhus cannot control, which on the contrary passes through a peculiar series of phases and stages independent of the will and the action of man, nay even being the prime governor of these. This "estrangemeny ' (to use a term which will be comprehensi ble to the philosopherS) can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an "intolerable" power, i.e., a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity "propertyless," and pro duced, at the same time, the contradiction or-an-eXiSting world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development. And, on the other hand, this development of productive f9-r�e_�_ (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the oM filthy business would necessarily be reproduced; and furthermore, because only with this universal development of productive forces is '
_'
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r
...
.
162
The Early Marx-
a universal intercourse between men established, which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the "propertyless" mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, and finally has put wor�d-his.!9r� empirically universal inq.iv��_uals in place ,of local ones. \Vithout this, -( J.)'"-co-mmunism could only exist as a local event; ( 2 ) the forces of intercourse themselves could not have developed as univer sal, hence intolerable powers: they would have remained home-bred conditions surrounded by superstition; and (3) each extension of intercourse would abolish local communism. Empirically, commu nism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples "all at once" and simultaneously, which presupposes the �!ljy.(;!F��f develop ment of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism. How otherwise could for instance property have had a history at all, have taken on different forms, and landed property, for example, according to the different premises given, have pro ceeded in France from parcellation to centralisation in the hands of a few, in England from centralisation in the hands of a few to par cellation, as is actually the case today? Or how does it happen that trade, which after all is nothing more than the exchange of prod ucts of various individuals and countries, rules the whole world through the relation of supply and demand-a relation which, as an English economist says, hovers over the earth like the fate of the ancients, and with invisible hand allots fortune and misfortune to men, sets up empires and overthrows empires, causes nations to rise and to disappear-while with the abolition of the basis of private property, with the communistic regulation of production (and, implicit in this, the destruction of the alien relation between men and what they themselves produce), the power of the relation of supply and demand is dissolved into nothing, and men get exchange, production, the mode of their mutual relation, under their own control again? CO!!!@.!lnism is for us not a state oLJlftrills. which is to be established-:-an tde� to wh ich-realitY[will] have to adjust itself. \Ve call communism the T!i.ql llloyernent which abolishes the pres ent state of things. The condltlo"ils�"orthis movement result from the premises now in existence. Moreover, the mass of propertyless workers-the utterly precarious position of labour-power on a mass scale cut off from capital or from even a limited satisfaction and, therefore, no longer merely temporarily deprived of work itself as a secure source of life-presupposes the world market through competition. The Erolf!!.:l.ri�t can thus only e2'ist w.orlcj.::histori.�ally, just as communisin�-Its activity, can only have a "world-historical" existence:-Warld-hlstorical existence of individuals, i.e., ex.istq;u�e_.QL individuals which is directly linked up �"i.th. world history .
.
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The German Ideology
163
The form of intercourse determined by the existin� productive for£e�_af all p�ey.I
Concerning the Production of Consciousness
In h istor y up to the present it is certainly an empirical fact that separate individuals have, with the broadening of their activity into world-historical activity, become more and more enslaved under a power alien to them (a pressure which they have conceived of as a dirty trick on the part of the - so-called universal spirit, etc.), a power which has become more and more enormous and, in the last instance, turns out to be the world market. B ut it is just as empiri-· cally established that, by the ove-rthrow of the existing state of society by the communist revolution (of which more below) and the abolition of private property which is identical with it, this power, which so ba£Hes the German theoreticians, will be dissolved; and that then the liberation of each single individual will be accomplished in the measure in which history becomes transformed into world history. From the above it is clear that the real intellec tual wealth of the individual depends entirely on the wealth of his real connections. Only then will the separate individuals be liber ated from the various national and local barriers, be brought into 7. Biirgerliche Gesellscha/t can mean either "hourgeois society" or "civil society."
. __
Ii . .'
'
164
The Early Marx
practical connection with the material and intellectual production of the whole world and be put in a position to acquire the capacity to enjoy this all-sided production of the whole earth (the creations of man). All-round dependence, this natural form of the world historical co-operation of individuals, will be transformed by this communist revolution into the control and conscious mastery of these powers, which, born of the action of men on one another, have till now overawed and governed men as powers completely alien to them. Now this view can be expressed again in speculative idealistic, i.e., fantastic, terms as "self-generation of the species" ("society as the subject"), and thereby the consecutive series of interrelated individuals connected with each other can be conceived as a single individual, which accomplishes the mystery of generat ing itself, It is clear here that individuals certainly make one another, physically and mentally, but do not make themselves either in the nonsense of Saint Bruno, or in the sense of the "Unique," of the "made" man. This conception of history depends on our ability to .expound the real process of production, starting out from the material produc tion of life itself, and to comprehend the form of intercourse con nected with this and created by this mode of production (i.e., civil society in its various stages), as the basis of all h istory; and to show it in its action as State, to explain all the different theoretical prod ucts and forms of consciousness, religion, philosophy, ethics, etc., etc., and trace their origins and growth from that basis; by which means, of course, the whole thing can be depicted in its totality (and therefore, too, the reciprocal action of these various sides on one another). It has not, like the idealistic view of. history, in every period to look for a category, but remains constantly on the real ground of history; it does not explain practice from the idea but explains the formation of ideas from material practice; and accord ingly it comes to the conclusion that all forms and pr()ducts of consciousness cannot be dissolved by mental criticism, by resolu tion into "self-consciousness" or transformation into "apparitions," "spectres," "fancies," etc., but only by the practical overthrow of the actual social relations which gave rise to this idealistic humbug; that not criticism but revolution is the driving force of history, also of religion, of philosophy and all other types of theory. It shows that history does not end by being resolved into "self consciousness" as "spirit of the spirit," but that in it at each stage there is found a material result: a sum of productive forces, a his torically created relation of individuals to nature and to one another, which is handed down to each generation from its prede cessor; a mass of productive forces, capital funds and conditions, which, on the one hand, is indeed modified by the new generation,
The German Ideology
1 65
but also on the other prescribes 'for it its conditions of life and g ives it a definite development, a special character. I t shows that circumstances make men j ust as m uch as men make circumstances. This sum of p rod uctive forces, capital funds and social forms of i ntercourse, which every individual and generation finds in exist ence as something given, is the real basis of what the philosophers have conceived as "substance" and "essence of man," and what they have deified and attacked : a real basis which is not in the least disturbed, in its effect and influence on the development of men, by the fact that these philosophers revolt against it as "self consciousness" and the "Unique." These conditions of life, which different generations find in existence, decide also whether or not the periodically recurring revolutionary convulsion will be strong enough to overthrow the basis of the entire existing system. And i f these material elements of a complete revolution are n ot present ( namely, on the one hand the existing productive forces, on the other the formation of a revolutionary mass, which revolts not only against separate conditions of society up till then, but against the very "production of life" till then, the "total activity" on which it was based), then, as far as practical development is concerned, it is absol utely immaterial whether the idea of this revolution has been expressed a h undred times already, as the history of communism proves. In the whole conception of history up to the present this real basis of history has either been totally neglected or else considered as a minor matter quite irrelevant to the course of history. History must, therefore, always be written according to an extraneous standard; the real production of life seems to be primeval history, while the truly historical appears to be separated from ordinary life, something extra-superterrestrial. \Vith this the relation of man to nature is excluded from history and hence the antithesis of nature and history is created. The exponents of this conception of history have consequently only been able to see in history the political actions of princes and States, religious and all sorts of theoretical struggles, and in particular in each historical epoch have had to share the illusion of that epoch. For instance, if an epoch imagines itself to be actuated by pu rely "political" or "religious" motives; although "religion" and "politics" are only forms of its true motives, the historian accepts this opinion. The "idea," the "con ception" of the people in question about their real practice, is transformed into the sole determining, active force, which controls and determines their practice. \Vhen the crude -form in which the division of labour appears with the Indians and Egyptians calls forth the caste-system in their State and religion, the historian believes that the caste-system is the power which has produced this
1 66
The Early Marx
crude social form . \Vhile the French and the English at least hold by the political illusion, w hich is moderately close to reality, the Germans move in the realm of the "pure spirit," and make reli gious illusion the driving force of h istory. The Hegelian philosophy of history is the last consequence, reduced to its "finest expression," of all this German historiography, for which it is not a question of real, nor even of political, interests, but of pure thoughts, which consequently m ust appear to Saint Bruno, as a series of "thoughts" that devour one another and are finally swallowed up in "self consciousness";8 and even more consistently the course of history appears to the Blessed Max Stirner, who knows not a thing about real history, as a mere tale of "knights," robbers and ghosts, from whose visions he can, of course, only save himself by "unholiness." This conception is truly religious: i t postulates religious ma n as the primitive man, the starting-point of history; and in its imagination puts the religious production of fancies in the place of the real production of the means of subsistence and of life itself. This whole conception of history, together with its dissolution and the scruples and qualms resulting from it, is a purely national affair of the Germans and has only local interest for the Germans, as for instance the important question treated several times of late: how really we "pass from the realm of God to the realm of Man" -as if this "realm of God" had ever existed anywhere save in the imagina tion, and the learned gentlemen, without being aware of it, were not constantly living in the "realm of Man" to which they are now seeking the way; and as if the learned pastime ( for it is nothing more) of explaining the mystery of this theoretical bubble-blowing did not on the contrary lie in demonstrating its origin in actua l earthly conditions. Always, for these Germans, it is simply a matter of resolving the nonsense of earlier writers into some other freak, i.e., of presupposing that all this nonsense has a special sense which can be discovered; while really it is only a question of explaining this theoretical talk from the actual existing conditions. The real, practical dissolution of these phrases, the removal of these notions from the consciousness of men, will, as we have already said, be effected by altered circumstances, not by theoretical deductions. For the mass of men, i.e., the proletariat, these theoretical notions do not exist and hence do not require to be dissolved, and if this mass ever had any theoretical notions, e .g., religion, etc., these have now long been dissolved by circumstances. The purely national character of these questions and solutions is shown again in the way these theorists believe in all seriousness that chimeras like "the God-Man," "Man," etc., have presided over 8. Marginal note by Marx: "So-called historiography just consists in treating the historical conditions in de-
objecti'IJe
pendent of activity. acter."
Reactionary char
The German Ideology
1 67
individual epochs of history ( Saint Bruno even goes so far as to assert that "only criticism and critics have made h istory") and when they themselves construct historical systems, they skip over all earlier periods in the greatest haste and pass immediately from "Mongolism" to history "with meaningful content," that is to say, to the history of the Hallische and Deutsche Jahrbiicher and the dis solution of the Hegelian school into a general squabble. They forget all other nations, all real events, and the theatrum mundi is confined to the Leipzig Book Fair and the mutual quarrels of "Crit icism," "Man," and "the Unique." I f these theorists treat really historical subjects, as for instance the eighteenth centrry, they merely give a history of the i deas of the times, torn away from the facts and the practical development fundamental to them; and even that merely in order to represent that period as an imperfect preliminary stage, the as yet limited predecessor of the real histori cal age, i.e ., the period of the German philosophic struggle from 1840 to 1844. As might be expected when the history of an earlier period is written with the aim of accentuating the brilliance of an unhistoric person and his fantasies, all the really historic events, even the really historic invasion of politics into history, receive no mention . Instead we get a narrative based not on research but on arbitrary constructions and literary gossip, such as Saint Bruno pro vided in his now forgotten history of the eighteenth century. These high-falutin and haughty hucksters of ideas, who imagine them selves infinitely exalted above all national prejudices, are thus in practice far more national than the beer-quaffing philistines who dream of a united Germany. They do not recognise the deeds of other nations as historical: they live in Germany, to Germany, and for Germany; they turn the Rhine-song into a religious hymn and conquer Alsace and Lorraine by robbing French philosophy instead of the French State, by Germanising French ideas instead of French provinces. Herr Venedey is a cosmopolitan compared with the Saints B runo and Max, who, in the universal dominance of theory, proclaim the universal dominance of Germany. It is also clear from these arguments how grossly Feuerbach is deceiving himself when (Wigand's Vierteljahrsschrift, 1845, Volume 2) by virtue of the qualification "common man" he declares himself a communist, transforms the latter into a predicate of "man," and thereby thinks it possible to change the word "com munist," which in the real world means the follower of a definite revolutionary party, into a mere category. Feuerbach's whole deduc tion with regard to the relation of men to one another goes only so far as to prove that men need and always have needed each other. He wants to est a blish consciousness of this fact, that is to say, like the other theorists, merely to produce a correct consciousness about
168
The Early Marx
an existing fact; whereas for the real communist it is a question of overthrowing the existing state of things . \Ve thoroughly appreci ate, moreover, that Feuerbach, in endeavouring to produce con sciousness of just this fact, is going as far as a theorist possibly can, without ceasing to be a theorist and ph ilosopher. It is characteris tic, however, that Saint Bruno and Saint Max seize on Feuerbach's conception of the communist and put it in place of the real com munist-which occurs, partly, in order that they can combat com munism too as "spirit of the spirit," as a philosophical category, as an equal opponent and, in the case of Saint Bruno, partly also for pragmatic reason. As an example of Feuerbach's acceptance and at the same time misunderstanding of existing reality, which he still shares with our opponents, we recall the passage in the Philos ophie der Zukunft where he develops the view that the existence of a thing or a man is at the same time its or his essence, that the con ditions of existence, the mode of life and activity of an animal or human individual are those in which its "essence" feels itself satis fied. Here every exception is expressly conceived as an unhappy chance, as an abnormality which cannot be al tered. Thus if mil lion s of proletarians feel by no means contented with their living conditions, if their "existence" does not in the least correspond to their "essence," then, according to the passage quoted, this is an unavoidable misfortune, which must be borne quietly. The millions of proletarians and communists, however, think differently and will prove this in time, when they bring their "existence" into h armony with their "essence" in a practical way, by means of a revolution . Feuerbach, therefore, never speaks of the world of man in such cases, but always takes refuge in external nature, and moreover in nature which has not yet been subdued by men. B ut every new invention, every advance made by industry, detaches another piece from this domain, so that the ground which produces examples illustrating such Feuerba chian propositions is steadily shrinking. The "essence" of the fish is its "existence," water-to go no fur ther than this one proposition. The "essence" of the freshwater fish is the water of a river. But the latter ceases to be the "essence" of the fish and is no longer a suitable medium of existence as soon as the river is made to serve industry, as soon as i t is polluted by dyes and other waste products and navigated by steamboats, or as soon as its water is diverted into canals where simple drainage can deprive the fish of its medium of existence. The explanation that all such contradictions are inevitable abnormalities does not essen tially differ from the consolation which the Blessed Max Stirner offers to the discontented, saying tha t this contradiction is their own contradiction and this predicament their own predicament,
The German Ideology
1 69
wh ereupon they should either set their minds at ease, keep their disgust to themselves, or revolt against it in some fantastic way. I t differs just as little from Saint Bruno's allegation tha t these unfor tunate circumstances are due to the fact that those concerned are s tuck in the muck of "substance," have not advanced to "absolut e self-consciousness," and do not realise that these adverse conditions a re spirit of their spirit. \�re shall, of course, not take the trou ble9 to enlighten our wise philosophers by explaining to them that the "libera tion" of "man" is not advanced a single s t epl by reducing philosophy, theology, substance and all the trash to "self-consciousness"2 and by liberat ing man from the d omination of these phrases,3 which h ave never held him in thrall .4 Nor will we explain to them tha t it is only pos sible to achieve real liberation in the real world and by employing'. real means, that slavery cannot be abolished without the steam engine and the mule and spinning-jenny, serfdom cannot be abol ished without improved agriculture, and that, in general, people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain foo d and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity. "Lib eration" is a historical and not a mental act, and it is brought about by historical conditions, the [development] of industry, com merce, [agri]culture, the [conditions of intercourse] * * * 5 In Germany,6 a country where only a trivial historical develop ment is taking place, these mental developments, these glorified and ineffective trivialities, naturally serve as a substitute for the lack of historical development, and they take root and have to be com bated. But this fight is of local importance . 7 * * * B i n reality a n d f o r the practical materialist, i.e., the commu nist, it is a question of revolutionising the existing world, of practi cally attacking and changing existing things . \Vhen occasionally we find such views with Feuerbach, they are never more than isolated surmises and have much too little influence o n his general outlook to be considered here as anything else than embryos capable of development. Feuerbach's "conception" of the sensuous world is confined on the one hand to mere contemplation of it, and on the other to mere feeling; he says "Man" instead of "real historical man." "Man" is really "the German . " In the first case, the contem plation of the sen suous world, he necessarily lights on things which 9. Marginal note by Marx: "FeueT back." 1. Marginal note by Marx: "Philo sophic liberation and real liberation." 2 . Marginal note by Marx: "Man. The Unique one. The individual." 3. Marginal note by Mar x : "Geologi cal, hydrographical, etc., conditions." 4. Marg inal note by Marx: "The
human body. Need and labour." 5. The following lines cannot be deci phered, for the sheet o f paper is badly damaged. 6. Marginal note by Marx: "The im portance o f phrases in Germany." 7. Marginal note by Marx: "Language is the language o f reality." 8. A gap in the manuscript.
170
The Early Marx
contradict his consciousness and feeling, which disturb the har mony he presupposes, the harmony of all parts of the sensuous world and especially of man and nature.9 To remove this disturb ance, he must take refuge in a double perception, a profane one which only perceives the "flatly obvious" and a higher, philosophi cal, one which perceives the "true essence" of things. He does not see how the sensuous world around him is, not a thing given direct from all eternity, remaining ever the same, but the product of industry and of the state of society; and, indeed, in the sense that it is an historical product, the result of the activity of a whole suc cession of generations, each standing on the shoulders of the preceding one, developing its industry and its intercourse, modi fying its social system according to the changed needs. Even the objects of the simplest "sensuous certainty" are only given h im through social development, industry and commercial intercourse . . The cherry-tree, like almost all fruit-trees, was, as is well known, only a few centuries ago transplanted by commerce into our zone, and therefore only by this action of a definite society in a definite age it has become "sensuous certainty" for Feuerbach . Incidentally, when we conceive things thus, as they really are and happened, every profound philosophical problem is resolved, as will be seen even more clearly later, quite simply into an empirical fact. For instance, the important question of the relation of man to nature ( B runo goes so far as to speak of "the antitheses in nature and history" ( p . llO), as though these were two separate "things" and man did not always have before him an historical nature and a natural history ) out of which all the "unfathomably lofty works" on "substance" and "self-consciousness" were born , crumbles of itself when we understand that the celebrated "unity of man with n ature" has always existed in industry and has existed in varying forms in every epoch according to the lesser or greater development of industry, j ust like the "struggle" of man with nature, r . i ght up to the development of his productive powers on a corresponding basis. Industry and commerce, production and the exchange of the neces sities of life, themselves determine distribution, the structure of the different social classes and are, in turn, determined by it as to the mode in which they are carried on; and so it happens that in Manchester, for instance, Feuerbach sees only factories and machines, where a hundred years ago onl y spinnin g-wheels and wea'v'ing-Iooms were to be seen, or in the Campagna of Rome he finds onl y pasture lands and swamps, where in the time of Augus9. N.B. Feuerbach's failing is n ot that he subordinates the flatly obvious, the sen suous appearance, to the sensuous real ity established by more accurate inves tigation of the sensuous facts, but that
he cannot in the last resort cope with the sensuous world except by looking at it with the "eyes," i.e., through the "spectacles" of the philosopher. [Marx]
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tus he would have found nothing but the vineyards and villas of Roman capitalists. Feuerbach speaks in particular of the perception of natural science; he mentions secrets which are disclosed only to the eye of the physicist and chemist; but where would natural sci ence be without industry and commerce? Even this "pure" natural s cience is provided with an aim, as with its material, only through trade and industry, through the sensuous activity of men. So much is this activity, this unceasing sensuous l abour and creation, this p roduction, the basis of the whole sensuous world as it now exists, that, were it interrupted only for a year, Feuerbach would not only find an enormous change in the natural world, but would very soon find that the whole world of men and his own perceptive faculty, nay his own existence, were missing. Of course, in all this the prior ity of external nature remains unassailed, and all this has no appli cation to the original men produced by generatio aequivoca; 1 but this differentiation has meaning only insofar as man is considered t o be distinct from n a ture. For that matter, nature, the nature that preceded human history, is n o t by any means the nature in which Feuerbach lives, it is n a ture which today no longer exists anywhere (except perhaps on a few Australian coral-islands of recent origin) and which, therefore, does not exist for Feuerbach. Certainly Feuerbach has a great advantage over the "p ure" materialists in that he realises how man too is an "object of the senses . " But apart from the fact that he only conceives him as an "object of the senses," n o t as "sensuous activity," because he still remains in the realm of theory and conceives of men not in their given social connection, not under their existing conditions of life, which have made them what they are, he never arrives at the really existing active men, but stops at the abstr action "man," a n d gets n o further than recognising "the true, individual, corporeal man" emotionally, i.e., he knows n o other "human relationships" "of man to man" than love and friendship, and even then idealised. H e gives no criticism o f the present conditions o f life . Thus h e never manages to conceive the sensuous world as the total living sensuous activity of the individuals composing it; and therefore when, for example, - he sees instead of healthy men a crowd of scrofulous, overworked and consumptive starvelings, he is compelled t o take refuge in the "higher perception" and in the ideal "compensation in the species," and thus to relapse into idealism at the very p oint where the communist materialist sees the necessity, and a t the same time the condition, of a transformation both of industry a n d o f t h e social structure. As far as Feuerbach is a ma terialist he does n o t deal with history, a n d as far as he considers history he is not a materialist. \Vith him 1 Spontaneous g e neration. .
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materialism and history diverge completely, a fact which inciden tally is already obvious from what has been sai d . History i s nothing but the succession o f the separate genera tions, each of which exploits the materials, the capital funds, the productive forces handed down to it by all preceding generations, and thus, on the one hand, continues the traditional activity in completely changed circumstances and, on the other, modifies the old circumstances with a completely changed activity. This can be s peculatively distorted so that later history is made the goal of ear lier history, e.g., the goal ascribed to the discovery of America is to further the eruption of the French Revolution. Thereby history receives its own special aims and becomes "a person ranking with other persons" (to wit: "Self-Consciousness, Criticism, the Unique," etc. ) , while what is designated with the words "destin y," "goal ," "germ ," or "ideal" of earlier history is nothing more than an abstraction formed from later history, from the active influence which earlier history exercises on later history. The further the separate spheres, which act on one another, extend in the course of this development, the more the original iso lation of the separate nationalities is destroyed by the developed mode of production and intercourse and the division of labour between various nations naturally bro u gh t forth by these, the more history becomes world history Thus, for instance, if in England a machine is invented, which deprives countless workers of bread in I ndia and China, and overturns the whole form of existence of these empires, this invention becomes a world-historical fact. Or again, take the case of sugar and coffee which have proved their world-historical importance in the nineteenth century by the fact tha t the lack of these products, occasioned by the Napoleonic Con tinental System, caused the Germans to rise against Napoleon, and thus became t h e real basis of the glorious "Vars of Liberation of 1813. From this it follows that this transformation o f h is t o ry into world history is not indeed a mere abstract act on th e p art of the "self-consciousness," the world spirit, or of any other metaphysical spectre, but a quite material, empirically verifiable act, an act the proof of which every individual furnishes as he comes and goes, eats, drinks and clothes himself . ..The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the s ame time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has th e means of material production at its disposal, has control a t the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are n othing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dom.
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inant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relation ships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and com pass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an "eternal law." The division of labour, which we have already seen above as one of the chief forces of history up till now, manifests itself also in the ruling class a s the division of mental and material labour, so that inside this class one part appears as the thinkers of the class (its active, conceptive ideologists, who make the perfecting of the illusion of the class about itself their chief source of livelihood), while the others' attitude to these ideas and illusions is more pas sive and receptive, because they are in reality the active members of this class and have less time to make up illusions and ideas about themselves. \Vithin this class this cleavage can even develop into a certain opposition and hostility between the two parts, which, how ever, in the case of a practical collision, in which the class itself is endangered, automatically comes to nothing, in which case there also vanishes the semblance that the ruling ideas were not the ideas of the ruling class and had a power distinct from the power of this class. The existence of revolutionary ideas in a particular period pre supposes the existence of a revolutionary class; about the premises for the latter sufficient has already been said above. If now in considering the course of history we detach the ideas of the ruling class from the ruling class itself and attribute to therp an independent existence, if we confine ourselves to saying that these or those ideas were dominant at a given time, without bother ing ourselves about the conditions of production and the producers of these ideas, if we thus ignore the individuals and world condi tions which a re the source of the ideas, we can say, for instance, that during the time that the aristocracy was dominant, the con cepts honour, loyalty, etc., were dominant, during the dominance of the bourgeoisie the concepts freedom, equality, etc. The ruling class itself on the whole imagines this to be so. This conception of history, which is common to all historians, particularly since the eighteenth century, will necessarily come up against the phenome non that increasingly abstract ideas hold sway, i.e., ideas which
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increasingly take on the form of universality. For each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, t o represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society, that is, expressed in ideal form : it has to give its ideas the form of univer sality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones. The class making a revolution appears from the very start, if only because it is opposed to a class, not as a class but as the repre sentative of the whole of society; it appears as the whole mass of society confronting the one ruling class.2 It can do this because, to start with, its interest really is more connected with the common interest of all other non-ruling classes, because under the p ressure of hitherto existing conditions its interest has not yet been able to develop as the particular interest of a particular class. I ts victory, therefore, benefits also many individuals of the other cl asses which are not winning a dominant position, but only insofar as it now puts these individuals in a position to raise themselves into the ruling class. When the French bourgeoisie overthrew the power of the aristocracy, it thereby made it possible for many proletarians to raise themselves above the proletariat, but only insofar as they became bourgeois. Every new class, therefore, achieves its hege mony only on a broader basis than that of the class ruling pre viously, whereas the opposition of the non-ruling class agai nst the new ruling class later develops all the more sharply and profoundly. Both these things determine the fact that the struggle to be waged against this new ruling cla ss, in its turn, aims at a more decided and radical negation of the previous conditions of society than could all previous classes which sought to rul e . This whole semblance, that the rule o f a certain class is only the rule of certain ideas, comes to a natural end, of course, as soon as class rule in general ceases to be the form in which society is organ ised, that is to say, as soon as it is no longer necessary to represent . a particular interest as general or the "general interest" as ruling. Once the ruling ideas have been separated from the ruling indi viduals and, above all, from the relationships which result from a given stage of the mode of production, and in this way the conclu sion has been reached that history is always under the sway of ideas, it is very easy to abstract from these various ideas " the idea," the notion, etc., as the dominant force in history, and thus to understand all these separate ideas and concepts as "forms of self determination" on the part of the concept developing in history. I t 2 . Marginal note b y Mar x : "Universal ity corresponds to ( 1 ) the class versus the estate, (2) the competition, world-wide intercourse, etc., ( 3 ) the great numerical strength of the ruling
class , ( 4 ) the illusion of the c o m m o n interests (in the beginning this illusion is true ) , ( 5 ) the delusion of the ideol ogists and the division of labour."
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follows then naturally, too, that all the relationships of men can be derived from the concept of man, man as conceived, the essence of man, Man. This has been done by the speculative philosophers. Hegel himself confesses at the end of the Geschichtsphilosophie that he "has considered the progress of the concept only" and h as represented in history the "true theodicy." Now one can go back again to the producers of the "concept," to the theorists, ideologists and philosophers, and one comes then to" the conclusion that the philosophers, the thinkers as such, have at all times been dominant in history : a conclusion, as we see, already expressed by Hegel. The whole trick of proving the hegemony of the spirit in history ( hierarchy Stirner calls it) is thus confined to the following three efforts. No. 1 . One must separate the ideas of those ruling for empirical reasons, under empirical conditions and as empirical individuals, from these actual rulers, and thus recognise the rule of ideas or illu sions in history. NO. 2 . One m ust bring an order into this rule of ideas, prove a mystical connection among the successive ruling ideas, which is managed by understanding them as "acts of self-determination on th e part of the concept" ( th is i s possible because by virtue of their empirical basis these ideas are really connected with one another and because, conceived as mere ideas, they become self-distinctions, distinctions made by though t ) . NO. 3 . To remove the mystical appearance of this "self-determin ing concept" it is changed into a person-"Self-Consciousness" or, to appear thoroughly materialistic, into a series of persons, who represent the "concept" in history, into the "thinkers," the "philos ophers," the ideologists, who again are understood as the manu facturers of history, as the "council of guardians," as the rulers.s Thus t h e whole body of materialistic elements has been removed from history and now full rein can be given to the speculative steed. \Vhilst in ordinary life every shopkeeper is very well able to dis tinguish between what somebody professes to be and what he really is, our historians have not yet won even this trivial insight. They take every epoch at its word and believe tha t everything it says and imagines about itself is true. This historical meth od which reigned in Germany and especially the reason why, must be understood from its connection with the illusion of ideologists in general, e .g., the illusions of the j urists, politicians (of the practical statesmen among them, too ) , from the dogmatic dreamings and distortions of these fellows; this is explained perfectly easily from their practical position i n life, their job, and the division of labour. 3. Marginal note by Marx : "Man = the 'rational human spirit.' "
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The Early Marx [ B . THE REAL BASIS OF IDEOLOGY] 4 1.
Intercourse and Productive Forces
The greatest division of material and ment al labour is the separa tion of town and country. The antagonism between town and country begins with the transition from barbarism to civilisation, from tribe to State, from locality to nation, and runs through the whole history of civilisation to the present day ( the Anti-Corn Law League) . The exi stence of the town implies, at the same time, the neces sity of administration, police, taxes, etc., in short, of the municipal ity, and thus of politics in general . Here first became manifest the division of the popula tion into two great classes, which is directly ba sed on the division of labour and on the instruments of produc tion. The town already is in actual fact the concentration of the p opulatiop, of the instrument s of production, of capital, of pleas ures, of needs, while the country d emonstrates just the opposite fact , isolation and separation. The antagonism between town and country can only exist within the framework of private property. It is the most crass expression of the subjection of the individual unde r the division of labour, under a definite activity forced upon him-a subjection which makes one man into a restricted town animal, the other into a restricted country-animal, and daily creates anew the conflict between their interests. Labour i s here again the chief thing, power over individuals, and as long as th e latter exists, private property must exist. The abolition of the antagonism bet ween town and country is one of the first conditions of commu nal life, a condition which again depends on a mass of material premises and which cannot be fulfilled by the mere will, as anyone can see a t the first glance. (These conditions have still to be enu merated . ) The separation of town and country can also be under stood as the separation of capital and landed property, as the begin ning of the existence and development of capital independent of landed property-the beginning of property having its basis only in labour and exchange. In the towns which , in the Middle Ages, did not derive ready made from an earlier period but were formed anew by the serfs who had become free, each man's own particular labour was his only property apa r t from the small capital he brough � with him, consisting almost solely of the most necessary tools of hIS craft . The competition of serfs constantly escaping into the town, the con4. Brackets indicate a sub-heading added by the editors. [R. T.]
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sta nt war of the country against the towns and thus the necessity of an organised municipal military force, the bond of common owner ship in a particular kind of labour, the necessity of common build ings for sale of their wares at a time when craftsmen were also trad ers, and the consequent exclusion of the unauthorised from t hese b uildings, the conflict among the interests of the various crafts, the necessity of protecting their laboriously acquired skill, and the feudal organisation of the whole of the country : these were the causes of the union of the workers of each craft in guilds. \Ve have not at this point to go further into the manifold modifications of the guild-system, which arise through later historical developments. The flight of the serfs into the towns went on without interruption right through the Middle Ages . These serfs, persecuted by their lords in the country, came separately into the towns, where they found an organised community, against which they were powerless and in which they had to subject themselves to the station assigned to them by the demand for their labour and the interest of their organised urban competitors . These workers, entering separately, were never able to attain to any power, since, if their labour was of the guild type which had to be learned, the guild-masters bent them to their will and organised them according to their interest; or if their labour was not such as had to be learned, and therefore not of the guild type, they became day-labourers and never man aged to organise, remaining a n unorganised rabble. The need for day-labourers in the towns created the rabble. These towns were true "associations," called forth by the direct need, th e care of providing for the protection of property, and of multiplying the means of production and defence of the separate members . The rabble of these towns was devoid of any power, com posed as it was of individuals strange to one another who had entered separately, and who stood un organised over against a n organised power, armed f o r war, a n d jealously watching over them. The journeymen and apprentices were organised in each craft as it best suited the interest of the masters. The patriarchal relationship existing between them and their masters gave the latter a double power-on the one hand because of their influence on the whole life of the jo urneymen, and on the other because, for the journey men who worked with the same master, it was a real bond which held them together against the j ourneymen of other masters and separated them from these. And finally, the journeymen were bound to the existing order by their simple interest in becoming masters themselves� While, therefore, the rabble at least carried out revolts against the whole municipal order, revolts which remained com pletely ineffective because of their powerlessness, the journeymen never got further than small acts of insubordination within sepa-
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rate guilds, such as belong to the very nature of the guild syste m . The great risings of the Middle Ages a l l radiated from the country, but equally remained totally ineffective because of the isolation and consequent crudity o f the peasants . In the towns, the division of labour between the individual guilds was as yet [quite naturally derived] and, in the guilds them selves, not at all developed between the individual workers . Every workman had to be 'versed in a whole round of tasks, had to be able to make everything that was to be made with h i s tools. The limited commerce and the scanty communication between the indi vidual towns, the lack of pOlml ;tion and the narrow needs did not allow of a higher division of labour, and therefore every man who wished to become a master had to be proficient in the whole of his craft. Thus there is found with medieval craftsmen an interest in their special work and in proficiency in it, which was capable of rising to a narrow artistic sense. For this very reason, however, every medieval craftsman was completely absorbed in his work, to which he had a contented, slavish relationship, and to which he was s ub jected to a far gre�ter extent than the modern worker, whose work is a matter of indifference to him. Capital in these towns was a naturally derived capital, consisting of a house, the tools of the craft, and the natural, hereditary cus tomers; and not being realisable, on account of the backwardness of commerce and the lack of circulation, it descended from father to son . Unlike modern capital, which can be assessed in money and which may be indifferently invested in this thing or that, this capi tal was directly connected with the particular work of the owner, inseparable from it and to this extent estate capital . The next extension of the division of labour was the separation of production and commerce, the formation of a special class of merchants; a separation which, in the towns bequeathed by a former period, had been handed down ( among other things with the Jews ) and which very soon appeared in the newly formed ones. With this there was given the possibility of commercial communi cations transcending the immediate neighbourhood, a possibility, the realisation of w hich depended on the existing means of commu nication, the state of public safety in the countryside, which was determined by political conditions ( during the whole of the Middle Ages, as is well known, the merchants travelled in armed caravans ) , and on the cruder or more advanced needs ( determined by the stage of culture attained ) of the region accessible to intercourse. 'Vith commerce the prerogative of a particular class, with the extension of trade through the merchants beyond the immediate surroundings of the town, there immediately appears a reciprocal action between production and commerce. The towns enter into
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relations with one another, new tools are brought from one town into the other, and the separation between production and com merce soon calls forth a new division of production between the individual towns, each of which is soon exploiting a p redominant branch of industry. The local restrictions of earlier times begin grad ually to be broken down . In the Middle Ages the citizens in each town were compelled to · unite against the landed nobility to save their skins . The extension of trade, the establishment of com munications, led the separate towns to get to know other towns, which had asserted the same interests in the struggle with the same antagonist. Out of the many local corporations of burghers there arose only gradually the burgher class. The conditions of life of the individual burghers became, on account of their contradiction to the existing relation ships and of the mode of labour determined by these, conditions which were common to them all and independent of each individ ual . The burghers had created the con ditions inso far as they had torn themselves free from feudal ties, and were created by them insofar as they were determined by their antagonism to the feudal system which they found in existence. When the individual towns began to enter into associations, these common conditions devel oped into class conditions. The same conditions, th e same contra diction, the same interests necessarily called forth on the whole similar customs everywhere. The bourgeoisie itself, with its condi tions, develops only gradually, splits according to the division of labour into various fractions and finally absorbs all propertied classes it finds in existence:; ( while it develops the maj ority of the earlier propertyless and a part of the hitherto propertied classes into a new class, the proletariat) in the measure to which all property found in existence is transformed into industrial or commercial cap ital. The separate individuals form a class only insofar as they have to carry on a common battle against another class; otherwise they are on hostile terms with each other as competitors. On the other hand, the class in its turn achieves an independent existence ' over against the individuals, so that the latter find their conditions of existence predestined, and hence have their position in life and their personal development assigned to them by their class, become subsumed under it. This is the same phenomenon as the subjection o f the separate individuals to the division of labour and can on ly be removed by the abolition of private property and of labour itself. \Ve have already indicated several times how this subsuming of individuals under the class brings with it their subjection to all kinds of ideas, etc. S. Marginal note by Marx : "To begin with it absorbs the branches of labour d irectly belonging to the State and
then all estates."
±
[more or less ] ideological
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The Early Marx
It depends purely on the extension of commerce whether the productive forces achieved in a locali ty, especially inventions, are lost for later development or not. As long as there exists no com merce transcending the immediate neighbourhood, every invention must be made s eparately in each locality, and mere chances such as irruptions of barbaric peoples, even ordinary wars, are sufficient to cause a country with advanced productive forces and needs to have to start right over again from the beginning. In primitive history every invention had to be made daily anew and in each locality independently. How little highly developed productive forces are safe from complete destruction, given even a relatively very exten sive commerce, is proved by the Phoenicians,6 whose inventions were for the most part lost for a long time to come through the ousting of this nation from commerce, its conquest by Alexander and its consequent decline . Likewise, for instance, glass-painting in the Middle Ages . Only when commerce has become world com merce and has as its basis large-scale industry, when all nations a re drawn into the competitive struggle, is the permanence of the acquired productive forces assured. The immediate consequence of the division of labour between the various towns was the rise of manufactures, branches of produc tion which had outgrown the guild-system . Manufactures first flour ished, in Italy and later in Flanders, under the historical premise of commerce with foreign nations. In other countries, E ngland and France for example, manufactures were at first confined to the home market. Besides the premises already mentioned manufactures de pend on an already advanced concentration of population, partic ularly in the countryside, and of capital, which began to accumulate in the hands o f individuals, partly in the guilds in spite of the guild regulations, partly among the merchants . That labour which from the first presl,lpposed a machine, even of the crudest sort, soon showed itself the most capable of develop ment. \Veaving, earlier carried on in the country by the peasants as a secondary occupation to procure their clothing, was the first labour to receive an impetus and a further development through the extension of commerce. Weaving was the first and remained the principal manufacture . The rising demand for clothing mate rials, consequent on the growth of p opulation, the growing accumu lation and mobilisation of natural capital through accelerated circu lation, the demand for luxuries called forth by the latter and favoured generally by the gradual extension of commerce, gave weaving a quantitative and qualitative stimulus, which wrenched it out o f the form of production hitherto existing. Alongside the peas6. Marginal note by Marx : "and the manufacture of glass i n the M i d d l e Ages."
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ants weaving for their own use, who continued, an d still continue, with this sort of work, there emerged a new class of weavers in the towns, whose fabrics were destined for the whole home market and usually for foreign markets too: \Veaving, an occupation demanding in most cases little skill and soon splitting up into countless branches, by its whole nature resisted the trammels of the guild. Weaving was, therefore, carried on mostly in villages and market centres without guild organisation, which gradually became towns, and indeed the most flou rishing towns in each land . \Vith guild-free manufacture, property relations also quickly changed . The first advance beyond naturally derived estate capital was provided by the rise of merchants whose capital was from the beginning movable, capital in the modern s ense as far as one can speak of it, given the circumstances of those times. The second advance came with manufacture, which again made mobile a mass of natural capital, and altogether increased the mass of movable capi tal as against that of natural capital. At the same time, manufacture became a refuge of the peasants from the guilds which excluded them or paid them badly, j ust as earlier the guild-towns had [served] as a refuge for the peasants from [the oppressive landed nobility] . Simultaneously with the beginning of manufactures there was a period of vagabondage ca used by the abolition of the feudal bodies of retainers, the disbanding of the swollen armies which had flocked to serve the kings against their vassals, the improvement of agriculture, and th e transformation of great st rips of tillage into pasture lan d. From this alone it is clear how this vagabondage is strictly connected with the disintergration of the feudal system . As early as the thirteenth century we find isolated epochs of this kind, but only at the end of the fi fteenth and beginning of the sixteenth does this vagabondage make a general and permanent appearance. These vagabonds, who were so numerous that, for instance, Henry VIl I of England had 7 2 ,000 of them hanged, were only prevailed upon to work with the greatest difficulty and through the most extreme necessity, and then only a fter long resistance. The rapid rise of manufactures, particularly in England, absorbed them grad ually. \Vith the advent of manufactures, the various nations entered into a competitive relationship, the struggle for trade, which was fought out in wars, protective duties and prohibitions, whereas ear lier the nations, insofar as they were connected at all, had carried on an inoffensive exchange with each other. Trade had from now on a political significance.
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' .
The Early Marx
With the advent of manufacture the relationship between worker and employer changed. In the guilds the patriarchal rela tionship between journeyman and master continued to exist; in manufacture its place was taken by the monetary relation between worker aad capitalist-a relationship which in the countryside and in small towns retained a patriarchal tinge, but i n the larger, the real manufacturing towns, quite early lost almost.. all patriarchal \ complexion. 1Ianufacture and the movement of production in general re ceived an enormous impetus through the extension of commerce which came with the discovery of America and the sea-route to the East Indies . The new products imported thence, particularly the masses of gold and silver which came into circulation and totally changed the position of the classes towards one another, dealing a hard blow to feudal landed property and to the workers; the expedi tions of adventurers, colon isation; and above all the extension of markets into a world market, which had now become possible and was daily becoming more and more a fact, called forth a new phase of historical development, into which in general we cannot here enter further. Through the colonisation of the newly discovered countries the commercial struggle of the nations amongst one another was given new fuel and accordingly greater extension and animosity. The expansion of trade and manufacture accelerated the accumu lation of movable capital, while in the guilds, which were not stim ulated to extend their production, natural capital remained station ary or even declined. Trade and manufacture created the big bour geoisie; in the guilds was concentrated the petty bourgeoisie, which no longer was dominant in the towns as formerly, but had to bow to the might of the great merchants and manufacturers.7 Hence the decl ine of the guilds, as soon as t hey came into contact with manufacture . The i ntercourse of nations took o n , in the epoch of which we have been speaking, two different forms. At first the small quantity of gold and silver i n circulation involved the ban on the export of these metals; and industry, for the most par t imported from abroad and made necessary by the need for employing the growing urban population, could not do without t hose privileges which could be gran ted not onl y, of course, against home competition, but chiefly against foreign. The local guild privilege was in these original prohi bitions extended over the whole nation. Customs duties originated from the tributes which the feudal lords exacted as protective levies against robbery from merchants passing through their territories; tributes later imposed likewise by the towns, and which, with the 7. Marginal note by M ar x : " P e t t y bourgeoisie-Middle class-Big bou rgeoisie."
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The Ger man Ideolog y
rise of the modem states, were the Treasury's mos t obvious means of raising m oney. The appearance of American gold and silver on the Eur ope an markets, the gradual development of indus try, the rapid expansion of trade and the consequent rise of the non-guild bourgeoisie and o f money, gave these measures another significance . The St at e , which was daily less and less able to do without money, now retained t he ban on th e e xpo r t of gold and silver out of fiscal considerations; the bourgeois, for whom these masses of money which were hurled on to t h e market became the chief object of speculative buy ing w ere thoroughly content with this; privil eg es established earlier became a source of income for the government and were sold for money; in ,
the customs legislation there appeared the export duty, which, since it only [placed] a hindrance in the way of indu s try had a purely ,
fiscal aim.
The second p er i od began i n the middle of the seventeenth cen tury and lasted almost to t he end of the ei gh teenth. Commerce and navigation had expanded more rapid ly than manufacture, which
played a secondary role; the colonies were becoming considerable
c o nsu me rs; and after long st ru ggl e s the separate nations shared out the opening world market among themselve s . This period begins with the Navigation Laws and colonial monopolies . The competi tion of the nations among themselves was excluded as far as possi ble by tariffs, p r o hibit ions and treaties; and in the last resort the competitive struggle was carried on and decided by wars (espe c ial ly naval wars) . Th e m ighti est maritime nation, the Eng li sh , retained preponderance i n trade and manufacture . Here, al ready, we fi n d concentration i n one country. l\Ianufacture was all the time sheltered by protective duties in the home market, by monopolies in the colonial mar ket, and abroad as much as possible by differenti al duties . The working-up of home-produced material was encouraged ( wool and linen in England, silk in France ) , the export of home-produced raw material forbidden (woo l in Engl and) , and the [working-up] of i m po r t e d material neglected or suppressed (cotton in England ) . The nation dominant in sea trade and colonial power na tu rally secured for itself also the greatest quant itative and qual it a t ive expansion of manufacture. Manufacture could not be carried on without prot e c ti o n since, if the slightest change takes place in other countries, it can lose its ma rke t and be ruined; under reasona bly favourable �onditions it may easily be introduced into a coun ,
try, but for this very reason can easily be destroyed. At the same time through the mode in which it is carried on, p ar ti c ularl y in the ei ghteenth century, in t h e countryside, it is to such an extent inter woven with the vital relat i onshi p s of a great mass of individuals,
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The Early Marx
that no country dare jeopardise its existence by permitting fre e competition . I nsofar as it manages to export, it therefore depen ds entirely on the extension or restriction of commerce, and exercises a relatively very small reaction [on the latter] . Hence its secondary [importance] and the influence of [the merchants] in the eight eenth century. It was the merchants and especially the shippers who more than anybody else pressed for State protection and monopolies; the manufacturers also demanded and indeed rec�ived protection, but all the time were inferior in political importance to the merchants. The commercial towns, particularly the maritime towns, became to some extent civilised and acquired the outlook of the big bourgeoisie, but in the factory towns an extreme petty bourgeois outlook persisted . Cf. Aiken, etc. The eighteenth century was the century of trade. Pinto says this expressly : "Le commerce fait la marotte du siecle";8 and : "Depuis quelque temps il n'est plus question que de commerce, de navigation et de marine . " 9 This period is also characterised by the cessation of the bans on the export of gold and silver and the beginning of the trade in money; by banks, national debts, paper money; by speculation i n stocks a n d shares a n d stockjobbing in all articles; by t h e develop ment of finance in general. Again capital lost a great part of the natural character which had still clung to i t. The concentration of trade and manufacture in one country, England, developing irresistibly in the seventeenth century, grad ually created for this country a relative world market, and thus a demand for the manufactured products of this country, which could no longer be met by the industrial productive forces hitherto existing. This deinand, outgrowing the productive forces, was the motive power which, by producing big industry-the application of elemental forces to industrial ends, machinery and the most com plex division o f labour-called into existence the third period of private ownership since the Middle Ages . There already existed in England the other pre-conditions o f this new phase : freedom of competition inside the nation, the development of theoretical mechanics, etc . ( Indeed, the science of mechanics perfected by ,
8. "Commerce is the rage of the century." 9. "For some time now people have been talking only about commerce, navigation and the navy . " [The move ment o f capital, although considerably accelerated, still remained, however, relatively slow. The splitting-up of the world market into separate parts, each of which was exploited by a particular nation, the exclusion of competition among themselves o n the part o f the nations, the clumsiness of production
itself a n d the fact that finance ' was only evolving from i t s early stages, greatly impeded circulation. The conse Quence o f this was a haggling, mean and niggardly s p i r i t which still clung to a l l merchants and t o the whole mode o f carrying o n trade. Compared with the manufacturers, and above all with the craftsmen, they were certainly big bourgeoi s ; compared with the mer chants and industrialists of the next period they remain petty bourgeois. Cf. Adam Smith .-MarxJ
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Newton was altogether the most popular science in France and England in the eighteenth century. ) ( Free competition inside the nation itself had everywhere to be conquered by a revolu tion-1 640 and 1 68 8 in Englan d, 1 789 in France . ) Competition soon compelled every country that wished to retain its historical role to protect its manufactures by renewed customs regulations ( the old duties were no longer any good against big industry ) and s oon after to introduce big industry under protective duties . Big industry universalised competition in spite of these protective meas ures ( it is practical free trade; the protective duty is only a pallia tive, a measure of defence within free trade ) , established means of communication and the modern world market, subordinated trade to itself, transformed all capital into industrial capital, and thus produced the rapid circulation ( development of the financial system ) and the centralisation of capital. By universal competition it forced all individuals to strain their energy to the utmost. It destroyed as far as possible ideology, religion, morality, etc., and where it could not do this, made them into a palpable lie. It p ro duced world history for the first time, insofar as it made all civilised nations and every individual member of them dependent for the satisfaction of their wants on the whole world, thus destroying the former natural exclusiveness of separate nations . It made natural science subservient to capital and took from the division of labour the last semblance of its natural character. It destroyed natural growth in general, as far as this is possible while labour exists, and resolved a l l natural relationships into money relationships. I n the place of naturally grown towns it created the modern, large indus trial cities which have sprung up overnight. \Vherever it pene trated, it destroyed the crafts and all earlier stages of ind1Jstry. It completed the victory of the commercial town over the countryside. [Its first premise] was the automatic system. [Its development] produced a mass of productive forces, for which private [property] became just as much a fetter as the guild had been for manufacture and the small, rural workshop for the developing craft. These pro ductive forces received under the system of private property a one sided development only, and became for the majority destructive forces; moreover, a great multitude of such forces could find no application at all within this system. Generally speaking, big indus try created everywhere the same relations between the classes of society, and thus destroyed the peculiar individuality of the various nationalities . And finally, while the bourgeoisie of each nation still retained separate national interests, big industry created a class, which in all nations has the same interest and with which national ity is already dead; a class which is really rid of all the old world
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The Early Marx
and at the same time stands pitted against i t . Big industry makes for the worker not only the relation to the capitalist, but labour itself, unbearable. It is evident that big industry does not reach the same level of development in all districts of a country. This does not, however, retard the class movement of the proletariat, because the proletar ians created by big industry assume leadership of this movement and carry the whole mass along with them, and because the work ers excluded from big industry are placed by it in a still worse situa tion than the workers in big industry itself. The countries in which big industry is developed act in a similar manner upon the more or less non-industrial countries, insofar as the latter are swept by uni versal commerce into the universal competitive struggle.l These different forms ar e just so many forms of the organisation of labour, and hence of property. In each period a unification of the existing - productive forces takes place, insofar as this has been ren dered necessary by needs. 2.
The Relation of State and Law to Property
The first form of �!y, in the ancient world as in the Middle Ages, is tribal property, determined with the Romans chiefly by war, witfitlieCermans by the rearing of cattle. In the case of the �!!£�.I}!_'p'.��!�s, since several tribes live together i n one town, the tribal 'pr.o.p�E�x �ppears as Statc:yr?p e : ty ! and the right of the indi vi dual t o it as niere- -""possess"ion'" which, however, like tribal prop erty as a whole, is confined to landed property only. Real private property began with the ancienfs, as with modern nationll, with movable property.- ( Slavery and community ) ( dominium ex jure Quiritum2 ) . IIi --the case of the nations which grew out of the Middle Ages, tribal property evolved through various stages-feudal landed property, corporative movable property, capital invested in manufacture-to modern capital, determined by big industry and universal competition, i. e., pure private property, which has cast off all semblance of a communal institution and has shut out the State from any influence on the development of property. To this 1 . Competition separates individuals from one another, not only the bour geois but still more the workers, i n s p i t e o f t h e f a c t t h a t i t b r i n g s them t o gether. Hence i t is a long time before these individuals can unite, apart from the fact that for the purposes o f this union-if it is nQt to be merely loc al-the necessary means, the great industrial cities and cheap and quick commun ications, h av e first to be pro duced by big industry. Hence every or ganised power standing over against
these isolated individuals, who live i n relationships d a i l y reproducing t h i s iso lation, can only be overcome afte r long struggles. To demand t h e opposite would b e tantamount to demanding that competition should n o t exist in this definite epoch o f history, o r that the individuals should banish from their minds relationships over which in their isolation they have no control.
[Marx)
2 . Ownersh i p in accordance with the la w applying to full Roman citizens.
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'inodem p rivate property corresponds t he modern State, which, pur cha sed grad ually by the owners of property by means of taxation, ha s fallen entirely into their hands through the national debt, and its existence has be c o m e w h o ll y de p en d en t on the commercial cre di t which the owners of property, the bourgeois, extend to it, as refl ected in the rise and fall of State funds on the stock ex ch an g e B y t he mere fact that it is �ass :m� t!1g. LC2�!_aE e �tC1te., . t!1.� � our . _ . g�Qj�i�_ is J.�ce�_ t.�� �_rganise i�se!f. n� J?11geI_local1Yl bu.t..? �,tj�}]:?nY1_ and to give a general form to its m ean average interest. Jhrou gh ��_<: �man.c:iP�tion of private property from the co mm uni t y , the State has become a separate entity, beside and out si d e Civil society; DutlCls· �notJiirig· ·m6re- HIali the for m of . otganisation whith- the Dour g eois nece s sa rily adopt both for i n tern a l and exfer"ii"aJ."p·urpos·es; .
'
'
tor�f.li� ._Ijlp.hial ·guaiantee ··of their
pendence
.
property and interests. The inde�
ol ·tfie· ···Statel·s·onl�;-f6iind nowadayS'" in' those coun tr ie s
where the estates have not yet completely developed into classes, where the estates, done away with in more advanced countries, still have a part to play, and where there exists a mixture; countries, that is to say, in which no one section of the population can achieve dominance over the others_ This is the case pa r ti cularl y in Germany. The most perfect example of the modern State is North America. The modern French, English and American writers all
express the opinion that the State exists only for the sake of private property, so that this fact has penetrated into the consciousness of the n orm a l man. Since the State is the 'form in which the individuals of a r uling class assert their common interests, and in w h ic h the whole civil society of an e p o ch is epitomised, it follows that t he State mediates in the formation of all common institutions and that the institu tions receive a poli t ical form . Hence the illusion that law is based on the will, and indeed on the will divorced from its real basis on free will. S imilar ly , ju st ic e is in its ' turn reduced t o the actual law s Civil law develops simultaneously with p rivate property out of the di si ntegra t i on of the natural co mm un i ty With the Romans the dev e l o pm en t of pri vat e property and civil l a w had no f u rth er indus trial and c o mm e r c ial consequences, because their whole mode of production did n o t alter.3 \Vith modern peoples, w he re the feudal community was d is in t e grat e d by industry and trade, there bega n with the rise of private property and c ivi l law a new phase, which was ca pa ble of ·further developmen t . The very first town which ca r ried on an extensive maritime trade in the Middle Ages, A m alfi, also developed maritime law. As soon as industry and tr a d e devel oped private property further, first in I ta ly and later in other coun.
.
'
3, Marginal note by Engel s : " ( Usury ! ) "
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The Early Marx
tries, the highly developed Roman civil law was immediately adopted again and raised to authority. vVhen later the bourgeoisie had acquired so much power that the princes took up its interests in order to overthrow the feudal nobility by means of the bourgeoi sie, there began in all countries-in France in the sixteenth century -the real development of l a w, which in all countries except Eng land proceeded on the basis of the Roman Codex. In England, too, Roman legal principles had to be introduced to further the devel opment of civil law (especially in the case of movable property ) . (It must not be forgotten that law has j ust as little an independent history as religion. ) In civil law the existing property relationships are declared to be the result of the general will. The jus utendi et abutendi4 itself asserts on the one hand the fact that private property has become entirely independent of the community, and on the other the illu sion that private property itself is based solely on the private will, the arbitrary disposal of the thing. In practice, the abuti5 has very definite economic limitations for the owner of private property, if he does not wish to see his property and hence his ius abutendi pass into other hands, since actually the thing, considered merely with reference to his will, is not a thing at all, but only becomes a thing, true property in intercourse, and independently of the law (a relationship, which the phi losophers call a n idea V ) . This juridical illusion, which reduces law to the mere will, necessarily leads, in the further development of property relationships, to the position that a man may have a legal title to a thing without really having the thing. If, for instance, the income from a piece of land is l ost owing to competition, then the proprietor has certainly his legal title to it along with the ius utendi et abutendi. B ut he can do nothing with it: he owns nothing as a landed proprietor if in addi tion he has not enough capital to cultivate his ground. This illusion of the jurists also explains the fact that for them, as for every code, it is altogether fortuitous that individuals enter into relationships among themselves (e .g. , contracts); it explains why they consider that these relationships [can 1 be entered into or not at will, and that their content rests purely on the individual [free 1 will of the contracting parties. \Vhenever, through the development of industry and commerce, new forms of intercourse have been evolved (e.g., ensurance compa nies, etc. ) , the l � has always been compelled to admit them � among the modes of acquiring property.
-
· • • .• r_ . . • • . • •
_
_. • ._ . _
4. The right of using a n d consuming (als o : abusin g ) , i.e., o f disposing o f a thing at w i l l . 5 . C o n s u m i n g o r abusing. 6. Marginal n o t e by M a r x : "For the
phii';sophers relationship
=
idea. They only know t h e relation o f ' M a n ' to himself and h e n c e f o r t h e m all r e a l re lations become ideas."
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[3 . Natural and Civilised Instrument s of Production and Forms of Property 1 * * * j From the first, there follows the premise of a highly devel oped division of labour and an extensive commerce; from the second, the locality. In the first case the individuals must be brough t together, in the second they find themselves alongside the given instrument of production as instruments of production them selves . Here, therefore, arises the difference between natural instru ments of production and those created by civilisation. The field ( water, etc. ) can be regarded as a natural instrument of produc tion. In the first case, tha t of the natural instrument of production, individuals are subservient to nature; in the second, to a product of labour. In the first case, therefore, property (landed property) appears as direc� natural domination, in the second, as domination of labour, particularly of accumulated labour, .capital . The first case presupposes that the individuals are united by some bond : family, tribe, the lan d itself, etc.; the second, that they are independent of one another and are only held together by exchange. In the first case, what is involved is chiefly an exchange between men and nature in which the labour of the former is exchanged for the prod ucts of the latter; in the second, it is predominantly an exchange of men among themselves . In the first case, average, human common sense is adequate-physical activity is as yet not separated from mental activity; in the second, the division between physical and mental labour m ust already be practically completed . I n the first case, the domination of the proprietor over the propertyless may be based on a personal relationship, on a kind of community; in the second, it must have taken on a material shape in a third p arty money . In the first case, small industry exists, but determined by the utilisation of the natural instrument of production and there fore without the distribution of labour among various individuals; in the second, industry exists only in and through the division of . labour. Our investigation hitherto started from the instruments of pro duction, and it has already shown tha t private property was a neces sity for certain industrial stages. In industrie extractive private prop erty still coincides with labour; in small industry and all agriculture up till now property is the necessary consequence of the existing instruments of production; in big industry the contradiction between the instrument of production and private property appears for the first time and is the p roduct of big industry; moreover, big industry must be highly developed to produce this contradiction . 7.
Four pages of the manuscript are missing here.
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The Early Marx
And thus only with big industry does the abolition of private prop erty become possible. In big indus try and competition the whole mass of conditions of existence, limitations, biases of individuals, are fused together into the two simplest forms : priv:]te property and labour. With money every form of intercourse, and intercourse itself, is considered for tuitous for the individuals . Thus money implies that all previous intercourse was onl y intercourse of individuals under particular con ditions, not of individuals as individuals. These conditions are reduced to two : accumulated labour or private property, and actual labour. If both or one of these ceases, then intercourse comes to a standstill . The modern economists themselves, e.g., Sismondi, Cherbuliez, etc ., oppose "association of individuals" to "association of capital." On the other. hand, the individuals themselves are entirely subordinated to the division of labour and h ence are brought into the most complete dependence o n one another. Pri vate property, insofar as within labour itself it is opposed to labour, evolves out of the necessity of accum ulation, and has still, to begin with, rather the form of the communality; but in its further devel opment it approaches more and more the modern form of private property. The division of labour implies from the outset the divi sion of the conditions of labour, of tools and materials, and thus the splitting-up of accumulated capital among different owners, and thus, also, the division between capital and labour, and the differ ent forms of property itself. The more the diyision of labour devel ops and accumulation grows, the sharper are the forms that this process of differentiation assumes. Labour itself can only exist on the premise of this fragmentation. Thus two facts are here revealed .s First the productive forces a ppear as a world for themselves, quite independent of and divorced from the individuals, alongside the individuals : t h e reason for this is that the individuals, whose forces they are, exist split up · and i n opposition to one another, whilst, on the other hand, these forces are only real forces in the intercourse and association of these individuals . Thus, on the one hand, we have a totality of pro ductive forces, which have, as it were, taken on a material form and are for the individuals no longer the forces of the individuals but of private property, and hence of the individuals only insofar as they are owners of private property themselves. Never, i n any earlier period, have the productive forces taken on a form so indifferent to the intercourse of individuals as individuals, because the.ir inter course itself was formerly a restricted one. On the other h and, standing over against these productive forces, we h a ve the majority of the individuals from whom these forces have been wrested away, 8.
Marginal note by Engel s : "Sismondi."
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and who, robbed thus of all real life-content, have become abstract individuals, but who are, however, only by this fact put into a posi tion to enter into relation with one another as individuals. The only connection which still links them with the productive forces and with their own existence-labour- has lost all sem blance of self-activity and only sustains their life by stunting i t . While in the earlier periods self-activity and the production of mate rial life were separated, in that they devolved on different persons, and while, on accoun t of the narrowness of the individuals them selves, the production of material life was considered as a subordi nate mode of self-activity, they now diverge to such an extent that altogether material life appears as the end, and what produces this material life, labour ( which is now the only possible but, as we see, negative form of self-activity ) , as the means . Thus things have now come to such a pass, that the individuals must appropriate the existing totality of productive forces, not only to achieve self-activity, but, also, merely to safeguard their very existence. This appropriation is first determined by the object to be appropriated, the productive forces, which have been developed to a totality and which only exist within a universal intercourse. From this aspect alone, therefore, this appropriation must have a univer· sal character corresponding to the productive forces and the inter course. The appropriation of these forces is itself nothing more than the development of the individual capacities corresponding to the material instruments of production. The appropriation of a totality of instruments of production is, for this very_ reason, the develop ment of a totality of capacities in the individuals themseives. This appropriation is further determined by the persons appropriating. Only the proletarians of the present day, who are completely shut off from all self-activity, are in a position to achieve a complete and no longer restricted self-activity, which consists in the appropri ation of a totality of productive forces and in the thus postulated development of a totality of capacities . All earlier revolutionary appropriations were restricted; individuals, whose self-activity was restricted by a crude instrument of production and a li mited inter� course, appropriated this crude iristrument of production, and hence merely achieved a new state of limitation . Their instrument of production became their property, but they themselves remained subordinate to the division of labour and their own instrument of production . In all expropriations up to now, a mass of individuals remained subservient to a single instrument of production; in the appropriation b y the proletarians, a mass of instruments o f produc tion must be made sub ject to each individual, and property to all. Modern universal intercourse can be controlled by individuals, therefore, only when controlled by all .
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The E arly Marx
This appropriation is further determined by the manner in which it must be effected. It can only be effected through a union, which by the character of the proletariat itself can again only be a univer sal one, and through a revolution, in which, on the one hand, th e power of the earlier mode of production and intercourse and social organisation is overthrown, and, on the other hand, there develops the universal character and the energy of the proletariat, without which the revolution cannot be accomplished; and in which, fur ther, the proletariat rids itself of everything that still clings to it from its previous position in society. Only at this stage does self-activity coincide with material life, which corresponds to the development of individuals into complete individuals and the casting-off of all natural limitations. The trans formation of labour into self-activity corresponds to the transforma tion of the earlier limited intercourse into the intercourse of indi viduals as such. With the appropriation of the total productive forces through united individuals, private property comes to an end. Whilst previously in history a particular condition always appeared as accidental, now the isolation of individuals and the particular private gain of each man have themselves become acci dental. The individuals, who a re no longer subject to the division of labour, have been conceived by the philosophers as an ideal, under the name "Man ." They have conceived the whole process which we have outlined as the evolutionary process of "Man," so that at every historical stage "Man" was substituted for the individuals and shown as the motive force of history. The whole process was thus conceived as a process of the self-estrangement of "Man," and this was essentially due to the fact that the average individual of the later stage was always foisted on to the earlier stage, and the con sciousness of a later age on to the individuals of an earlier. Through this inversion, which from the first is an abstract image of the actual conditions, it was possible to transform the whole of history into an evolutionary process of consciousness . Finally, from the conception of history we have sketched we obtain these further conclusions : ( 1 ) In the development of pro ductive forces there comes a stage . when productive forces and means of intercourse are brought into being, which, under the exist ing relationships, only cause mischief, and are no longer productive but destructive forces ( machinery and money ) ; and connected with this a class is called forth, which has to bear all the burdens 0.£ society without enjoying its advantages, which, ousted from society, is forced into the most decided a n tagonism to all other classes; a class which forms the majority of all members of society, and from
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which emanates the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamen tal revolution, the communist consciousness, which may, of course, arise among the other classes too through the contemplation of the situation o f this class. ( 2 ) The conditions under which definite productive forces can be applied, are the conditions of the rule C?f a definite class of society, whose social power, deriving from its prop erty, has its practical-idealistic expression in each case in the form of the State; and, therefore, every revolutionary struggle is directed against a class, which till then has been in power.9 ( 3 ) In all revo lutions up till now the mode of activity always remained unscathed and it was only a question of a different distribution of this activity, a new distribution of labour to other persons, whilst the communist revolution is directed against the preceding mode of activity, does away with labour, and abolishes the rule of all classes with the classes themselves, because it is carried through by the class which no longer counts as a class in society, is not recognised as a class, and is in itself the expression of the dissolution of all classes, nation alities, etc., within present society; and ( 4 ) B oth for the produc tion on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success o f the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in ' any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolu tion succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew. C . COMMUNISM. THE PRODUCTION OF THE FORM O F INTERCOURSE ITSELF Com munism differs from all previous movements in tha t it over turns the basis o f all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural char acter and subjugates them to the power of the united individualS. I ts organisation is, therefore, essentially economic, the material ' production of the conditions of this unity; it turns existing condi tions into conditions of unity. The reality, which communism is creating, is precisely the true basis for rendering it impossible that anything should exist independently of individuals, insofar ,as real ity is only a product of the preceding intercourse of individuals themselves. Thus the communists in practice treat the conditions created up to now by production and intercourse as inorganic con9 . Marginal note by Marx : 'The people are i n terested i n maintaining the present state of production."
1 94
The Early Marx
ditions, without, however, imagining tha t it was the plan or the destiny of previous generations to give them material, and without believing that these conditions were inorganic for the individ uals creating them . The difference between the individual as a person and what is accidental to him is not a conceptual difference but a historical fact . This distinction has a different significance at different times-e.g., the estate as something accidental to the indi vidual in the eighteenth century, the family more or less too . It is not a distinction that we have to make for each age, but one which each age makes itself from among the different elements which it finds in existence, and indeed not according to any theory, but compelled by material collisions in lif e . \Vhat appears accidental to the later age as opposed to the earlier-and this applies also to the elements handed down by an earlier age-is a form of intercourse which corresponded to a definite stage of development of the pro ductive forces. The relation of the productive forces to the form of intercourse is the relation of the form of int ercourse to the occupa tion or activity of the individuals. ( The fundamental form of this activity is, of course, material, on which depend all other forms-mental, political, religious, etc. The various shaping of material life is, of course, in every case dependent on the needs which are already developed, and the production, as well as the satisfaction, of these needs is an historical process, which is not found in the cas e of a sheep or a dog. ( Stirn er's refractory principal argument adversus hominem ) , although sheep and dogs in their present form certainly, but malgre eux, are products of an historica l process. ) The conditions under which individuals have intercourse with each other, so long as the above-mentioned contradiction is absent, are conditions appertaining to their individuality, in no way external to them; condi tions under which these definite individuals, living under definite relations, can alone produce their ma terial life and what is connected with it, are thus the conditions of their self-activity and are produced by this self-activity.! The definite condition under which they produce, thus corresponds, as long as the contradiction has not yet appeared, to the reality of their condi tioned nature, their one-sided existence, the one-sidedness of which only becomes evident when the contradiction enters on the scene and thus exists for the later individual s. Then this condition ap pears as an accidental fetter, and the consciousness tha t it is a fetter is imputed to the earlier age as well. These various conditions, which appear first as conditions of self-activity, later as fetters upon it, form in the whole evolution of history a coherent series of forms of intercourse, the coherence of which consist s in this : in the place of an earlier form of inter I . Marginal note by Marx : "Production of the form of intercourse itself."
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course, which has become a fetter, a new one is put, corresponding ; to the more developed productive forces and, hence, to the advanced mode of the self-activity of individuals-a form which in its turn becomes a fetter and is the n replaced by a n other. Since these con ditions correspond at every stage to the simultaneous development of the productive forces, their history is a t the same time the his tory of the evolving productive forces taken over by each new generation, and is, therefore, the history of the development of the forces of the individuals themselves. Since this evolution takes place natural ly, i . e . , is not subordi nated to a general plan of freely combined individuals, it proceeds from various localities, tribes, nations, branches of labour, etc., each of which to start with develops independently of the others and only gradually enters into relation with the others. Furthermore, it takes place only very slowly; the various stages and interests are never completely overcome, but only subordinated to the prevailing inter est and trail along beside the latter for centuries afterwards. It fol lows from this that within a nation itself the individuals, even apart from their pecuniary circumstances, have quite different develop ments, and that an earlier interest, the peculiar form of intercourse of which has already been ousted by that belonging to a later inter est, remains for a long time afterwards in p ossession of a traditional power in the illusory community ( State, law), which has won an existence independent of the individuals; a power which in the l ast resort can only be broken by a revolution . This explains why, with reference to individual points which allow of a more general sum ming-up, consciousness can sometimes appear further advanced than the contemporary empirical relationships, so that in the strug gles of a latter epoch one can refer to earlier theoreticians as authorities . On the other hand, in countries which, like North America" begin in an already advanced historical epoch, the development proceeds very rapidly. Such countries have no other natural prem ises than the individuals, who settled there and were l ed to do so because the forms of intercourse of the old countries did not corre spond to their wants. Thus they begin with the most advanced indi viduals of the old countries, and, therefore, with the correspond ingly most advanced form of intercourse, before this form of inter course has been able to establish itself in the old countries.2 This is the case with all colonies, insofar as they are not mere military or trading stations . Carthage, the Greek colonies, and Iceland in the 2. Personal energy of the individuals of various nations-Germans and Ameri cans-energy even through cross breeding-hence the cretinism o f the Germans ; in France and England, etc.,
f o r e i g n peoples transplanted to a n al ready developed s o i l , in America to an entirely new soil ; in Germany the nat ural population Quietly stayed where it was. [Marx]
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The Early Marx
eleventh and twelfth centuries, provide examples of this . A similar relationship issues from conquest, when a form of intercourse which has evolved on another soil is brought over complete to the conquered coun try : whereas in its home it was still encumbered with interests and relationships left over from earlier periods, here it can and m ust be established completely and without hindrance, if only to assure the conquerors' lasting power . ( England and Naples after the Norman conquest, when they received the most perfect form of feudal organisation . ) Nothing is more common than the notion that in history u p till now it has only been a question of taking. The barbarians take the Roman Empire, and this fact of taking is made to explain the tran sition from the old world to the feudal system . In this taking by barbarians, however, the question is, whether the nation which is conquered has evolved industrial productive forces, as is the case with modern peoples, or whether their productive forces are based for the most part merely on their association and on the commu nity. Taking is further determined by the object taken . A banker's fortune, consisting of paper, cannot be taken a t all, without the taker's submitting to the conditions of production and intercourse of the country taken. Similarly the total industrial capital of a modern industrial country. And finally, everywhere there is very soon an end to taking, and when there is nothing more to take, you have to set about producing. From this necessity of producing, which very soon asserts itself, it follows that the form of commu nity adopted by the settling conquerors must correspond to the stage of development of the productive forces they find in exist ence; or, if this is not the case from the start, it must change according to the productive forces. By this, too, is explained the fact, which people profess to have noticed everywhere in the period following the migration of the peoples, namely, that the servant was master, and that the conquerors very soon took over language, culture and manners from the conquered. The feudal system was by no means brought complete from Germany, but had its origin, as far as the conquerors were concerned, in the martial organisa tion o f the army during the actual conquest, and this only evolved after the conquest into the feudal system proper through the action of the productive forces found in the conquered countries . To what an extent this form was determined by the productive forces is shown by the abortive attempts to realise other forms derived from reminiscences of ancient Rome ( Charlemagne, etc. ) . Thus all collisions in history have their origin, according to our view, i n the contradiction between the productive forces and the form of intercourse. Inciden tally, to lead to collisions in a country, this contradiction need not necessarily have reached its extreme
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limit in this particular country. The competition with industrially more advanced countries, brought about by the expansion of inter nat ional intercourse, is sufficient to produce a similar contradiction in countries with a backward industry (e.g., the latent proletariat in Germany brought into view by the competition of English indus try ) . This contradiction between the productive forces and the form of intercourse, which, as we saw, has occurred several times in past history, without, however, endangering the basis, necessarily on each occasion burst o u t in a revolution, taking on at the same time various subsidiary forms, such as all-embracing collisions, collisions of various classes, contradiction of consciousness, battle of ideas, etc., political conflict, etc. From a narrow point of view one may isolate one of these subsidiary forms and consider it as the basis of these revolutions; and this is all the more easy as the individuals who started the revolutions had illusions about their own activity according to their degree of culture and the stage of historical development. The transformation, through the division of labour, of personal powers (relationships ) into material powers, cannot be dispelled by dismissing the general idea of it from one's mind, but can only be abolished by the individuals again subjecting these material powers to themselves and abolishing the division of labour.3 This is not possible without the community. Only in community [with others has each] individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all direc tions; only in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possi ble. In the previous substitutes for the community, in the St ate, etc., personal freedom has existed only for the individuals who developed within the relationships of the ruling class, and only insofar as they were individuals of this class. The illusory commu nity, in which individuals have up till now combined, always took on an independent existence in relation to them, and was at the same time, since it was the combination of one class over against another, not only a completely illusory community, but a n ew fetter as well. In the real community the individuals obtain their freedom in and through their association . It follows from all w e have been saying u p till now that the com munal relationship into which the individuals of a class entered, and which was determined by their common interests over against a third party, was always a community to which these individuals belonged only as average individuals, only insofar as they lived within the conditions of existence of their class--a relationship in which they participated not as individuals but as members of a class. With the community of revolutionary proletarians, on the 3. Marginal note by Engel s : ' ( Feuerbach : being and essence. ) "
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other hand, who take their conditions of existence and those of all members of society under their control, i t i s j us t the reverse; it is as individuals that the individuals participate in i t . It is just this com bination of individuals ( assuming the advanced stage of modern productive forces, of course ) which puts the conditions of the free development and movement of individuals under their control conditions which were previously abandoned to chance and had won an independent existence over against the separate individuals just because of their separation as individuals, and because of the necessity of their combination which had been determined by the divisio n of labour, and through their separation had become a bond alien to th em. Combination up till now (by no means an arbitrary one, such as is expounded for example in the Contrat social, but a necessary one ) was an agreement upon these conditions, within which the individuals were free to enjoy the freaks of fortune ( compare, e . g . , the formation of the North American State and the South American republics ) . This right to the undisturbed enjoy ment, within certain conditions, of fortuity and chance has up till now been called personal freedom. These conditions of existence are, of course, only the productive forces and forms of intercourse at any particular time. If from a philosophical point of view one considers this evolution o f individuals in the common conditions of existence of estates and classes, which followed on one another, and i n the accompanying general conceptions forced upon them, it is certainly very easy to imagine that in these individuals the species, or "Man ," has evolved, or that they evolved "Man"-and in this way one can give history some hard clouts on the ear.4 One can conceive these var ious estates and classes to be specific terms of the general expres sion, subordinate varieties of the species, or evolutionary phases of "Man . " This subsuming of individuals under definite classes cannot b e abolished until a class has taken shape, which h a s no longer any particular class interest to assert against the ruling class . Individuals have always built on themselves, but naturally on themselves within their given historical conditions a n d relation ships, not on the "pure" individual in the sense of the ideologists . But in the course of historical evolution, and precisely through the inevitable fact that within the division of labour social relationships take on an independent existence, there appears a division within the life of each individual, insofar a s it is personal and insofar as i t 4. The
statement which frequently oc curs with Saint Max that each is all th a t h e is through t h e State is funda mentally the same as the statement that bourgeois i s only a s p e ci m e n of the bourgeois species ; a statement
which presupposes that the class of bourgeois existed before the individuals constituting it. [Mar%] Marginal note by Marx to this sen tence: "With the philosophers pre-e%ist C/lce o f the c l ass."
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is determined by some branch of labour and the conditions pertain ing to it. (We do not mean it to be understood from this that, for example, the rentier, the capitalist, etc., cease to be persons ; but their personality is conditioned and determined by quite definite class relationships, and the division appears only in their opposition to another class and, for themselves, only when they go bankrupt. ) In the estate (and even more in the tribe ) this is as yet concealed : for instance, a nobleman always remains a nobleman, a commoner al ways a commoner, apart from his other relationships, a quality inseparable from his individuality. The division between the per sonal and the class individual, the accidental nature of the condi tions of life for the individual, appears only with the emergence of the class, which is itself a product of the bourgeoi sie . This acciden tal character is only engendered and developed by competition and the struggle of individuals among themselves. Thus , in imagination, individuals seem freer under the dominance of the bourgeoisie than before, because their conditions of life seem accidental; in reality, of course, they are less free, because they are more subjected to the violence of things . The difference from the estate comes out partic ularly in the antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the proletar iat. \Vhen the estate of the urban burghers, the corporations, etc . , emerged in opposition to the landed nobility, their condition o f existence-movable property a n d craft labour, which had already existed latentl y before their separation from the feudal ties appeared as something positive, which was asserted against feudal landed property, and, therefore, in its own way at first took on a feudal form. Certainly the refugee serfs treated their previous servi tude as something accidental to their personality. B ut here they only were doing what every class that is freeing itself from a fetter does; and they did not free themselves as a class but separately. Moreover, they did not rise above the system of estates, but only formed a new estate, retaining their previous mode of labour even in their new situation, and developing it further by freeing it from its earlier fetters, which no longer corresponded to the development already attained.5 For t h e proletarians, on the other hand, t he condition of their existence, labour, and with it all the conditions of existence govern ing modern society, have become something accidental, somet hing s. N.B. It must not be forgotten t h a t the s e r f s ' v e r y need o f e x i s t i n g and t h e i m possibility o f a large-scale economy, which involved the distribution o f the allotments among the serfs, very soon reduced the services of the serfs to their lord to an average of payments in kind and statute-labour. This made it possible f o r the serf t o accumulate movable property and hence faci litated
h i s escape o u t o f possession o f his lord and g av e h i m the prospect o f making his way as an urban citizen ; i t also created gradations among the serfs, so t h a t the runaway serfs were already h a l f burghers. It i s l i k ewise obvious that the serfs who were m asters o f a craft had the best chance of acquiring movable property. [Marx]
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over which they, as separate individuals, have no control, and over which no social organisation can give them control. The contradic tion between the individuality of each separate proletarian and labour, the condition of life forced upon him, becomes evident to him himself, for he is sacrificed from youth upwards and, within his own class, )I-as no chance of arriving at the conditions which would place him in the other class . Thus, while the refugee serfs only wished to be free to develop dnd assert those conditions of existence which were already there, and hence, i n the end, only arrived at free labour, the proletarians, if they are to assert themselves as individuals, will have to abolish the very condition of their existence hitherto ( which has, moreover, been that of all society up to the presen t ) , namely, labour. Thus they find themselves directly opposed to the form i n which, hith erto, the individuals, of which society consists, have given them selves collective expression, that is, the State. In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State.
PART I I
The Critique of Capitahsm
Wage Labour and Cap ital KARL MARX
Shortly after adumbrating the materialist conception o f history in the 1 8 4 4 manuscripts a n d formulating i t comprehensively in Part I o f T h e German Ideology, Marx turned to the economic studies that were going to preoc
CUpy
him in the ensuing years . This did not signify any change of interests
or outlook but was the logical outgrowth of the position taken i n his ear lier writings. If the thesis on "alienated labor" was to b e made scientifically cogent and if the expectation of coming proletarian revolution was to be based upon it, h e needed to show the capital-labor relationship, which he took to b e the core of the bourgeois socio-economic system, to be dialecti cally self-destructive, i . e . , transitory b y virtue of its inner dynamics o f devel opment. The first work i n which h e attempted this analysis was Wage La bour and Capital. Having first presented i t i n lectures to a German workers' society in Brussels i n December, 1 8 4 7, M a r x printed the work i n April, 1 8 49, in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, o f whic h h e was editor-in-chief. Several pam phlet editions appeared i n later years. I n editing i t for the German edition of 1 8 9 1
( the
version that appears here ) , Engels made some c h anges i n t h e
t e x t , m a i n l y centering i n t h e substitution o f the phrase " l a b o u r power" f o r the t e r m "labour" i n contexts in w h i c h Marx h a d originally spoken of t h e worker's sale o f h i s l a b o u r to the capitalist. T h i s , as Engels explained i n h i s p r e f a c e to the 1 8 9 1 e d i t i o n , brought the reasoning o f the pamphlet i n t o line w i t h the analysis o f the capital-labor relationship as Marx h a d refined it by 1 8 5 9 , when he published A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Despite this, i t may b e said t h a t what Marx produced i n the lectures o f l a t e 1 847 was the future argument o f Capital i n e m b r y o . T h e w o r k appears here in condensed form.
I From various quarters we have been reproached with not having presented the economic relations which constitute the material foundation of the present class struggles and national struggles . \Ve have designedly touched upon these relations only where they directly forced themselves to the front in political conflicts. 203
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The Critique of Capitalism *
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*
Now, after our readers have seen the class struggle develop in colossal political forms in 1 8 48, the time has come to deal more closely with the economic relations themselves on which the exist ence of the bourgeoisie and its class rule, as well as the slavery of the workers, a re founded . *
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*
Now, therefore, for the first question : What are wages? How are they determined? If workers were asked : "How much are your wages?" one would reply : "I get a mark a day from my employer"; another, "I get two marks, " and so on . According to the different trades to which they belong, they would mention different sums of money which they receive from their respective employers for the performance of a par ticular piece of work, for example, weaving a yard of linen or type setting a printed sheet. In spite of the variety of their statements, they would all agree on one point : wages are the sum of money paid by the capitalist for a particular labour time or for a particular output o f labour. The capitalist, it seems, therefore, buys their l abour with money. They sell him their labour for money. B ut this i s merely the appearance. In reality what they sell to the capitalist for money is their labour power. The capitalist buys this labour power for a day, a week, a month, etc. And after he has bought it, he uses it by having the workers work for the stipulated time. For the same sum with which the capitalist has bought their labour power, for exam ple, two marks, he could have bough t two pounds of sugar or a def inite amount o f any other com modity. The two marks, with which he bought two pounds of sugar, are the price of the two pounds of sugar. The two marks, with which he bought twelve .hours' use of labour power, are the price of twelve hours' labour. Labour power, therefore, is a commodity, neither more nor less than sugar. The' former is measured by the clock, the latter by the scales . *
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*
Labour power is, therefore, a commodity which its possessor, the wage-worker, sells to capita l. Why does he sell it? In order to live. But the exercise of labour power, l\lbour, is the worker's own life-activity, the manifestation of his own life. And this life-activity he sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of subsistence. Thus his life-activity is for him only a means to enable him to exist. He works in order to live. He does not even reckon labour as part of his life, it is rather a sacrifice of h is life. It is a
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205
commodity which he has made over to another. Hence, also, the product of his activity is not the object of his activity. \Vhat he produces for himself is not the silk that he weaves, not the gold that he draws from the mine, not the palace that he build s . \Vhat he produces for himsel f is wages, and silk, gold, palace resolve themselves for him into a definite quantity of the means of subsist ence, perhaps into a cotton jacket, some copper coins and a lodging in a cellar. And the worker, who for twelve hours weaves, spins, drills, turns, b uilds, shovels, breaks stones, carries loads, etc.-does he consider this twelve hours' weaving, spinning, drilling, turning, building, shovelling, stone breaking as a manifestation of h is life, as life? On the contrary, life begins for him where this activity ceases, at table, in the public house, in bed. The twelve hours' labour, on the other hand, has no meaning for him as weaving, spinning, drill ing, etc., but as ear n i ngs , which bring him to the table, to the public house, into bed. If the silk worm were to spin in order to continue its existence as a caterpillar, i t would be a complete wage-worker. Labour power was not always a commodity. Labour was not always wage labour, that is, free labour. The slave did not sell his labour power to the slave owner, any more than the ox sells its services to the peasant. The slave, together with his labour power, is sold once and for all to his owner. He is a commodity which can pass from the hand of one owner to that of another. He is himself a commodity, but the labour power is not his commod ity. The serf sells only a part of his labour powe r. He does not receive a wage from the owner of the land; rather the owner of the land receives a tribute from h i m . The serf belongs to the la nd a n d turns over to the owner of the land the fruits thereof. The free labourer, on the other hand, sells himself and, indeed, sells himself piecemeal . He sells a t auction eight, ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his life, day after day, to the highest bidder, to the owner of the raw materials, instruments of labour and means of subsistence, that is, to the capitalist. The worker belongs neither to a n owner nor to the land, but eight, ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his daily life belong to him who buys them. The worker leaves the capitalist to whom he hires h imself whenever he likes, and the capitalist discharges him whenever he thinks fit, as soon as he no longer gets any profit out of him, or not the antici pated profit. B ut the worker, whose sale source of livelihood is the sale of his labour power, ca nnot leave the whole class of pu,rchasers, that is, the capitalist class, without renouncing his existence. He belongs not to this or that capitalist but to the capitalist class, and, moreover, it is his business to dispose of himself, that is, to find a purchaser within this capitalist class . *
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\Vages will rise and fall according to the rela tion of supply and demand, according to the turn taken by the competition between the buyers of labour power, the capitalists, and the sellers of labour power, the workers. The fluctuations in wages correspond in general to the fluctuations in prices of commodities. \Vithin these fiuctua tions, however, the price of labour will be determined by the cost of production, by the labour time necessary to produce this com modity-labour power. What, then, is the cost of production of labour power? I t is the cost required for maintaining the worker as a worker and of developing him into a worker. The less the p eriod of training, therefore, that any work re quires the smaller is the cost of production of the worker and the lower is the price of his labour, his wages. In those branches of industry in which hardly any period of apprenticeship is req\lired and where the mere bodily existence of the worker suffices, the cost necessary for his production is almost confined to the commodities necessar y for keeping him alive and capable of working. The price of his labour will, therefore, be determined by the price of the necessary means of subsistence. Another consideration, however, also comes in. The ma nufacturer in calculating his cost of production and, accordingly, the price of the products takes into account the wear and tear of the instru ments of labour. I f, for example, a machine costs him 1 , 000 marks and wears out in ten years, he adds 1 00 marks annually to the price of the commodities so as to be able to replace the worn-out machine by a new one at the end of ten years . In the same way, i n calculating the cost of production of simple labour power, there m ust be included the cost of reproduction, whereby the race of workers is enabled to multiply and to replace worn-out workers by new ones . Thus the depreciation of the worker is taken into acco unt in the same way as the depreciation of the machine . The cost of production of simple labour power, therefore, amounts to the cost of existence and reproduction of the worker. The price of this cost of existence and reproduction constitutes wages . \\'ages so determined are called the wage minimum. This wage minimum, like the determination of the price of commodities by the cost of p roduction in general, does not hold g ood for the single individual but for the species. Individual workers, millions of workers, do not get enough to be able to exist and reproduce them selves; but the wages of the whole working class level down, within their fluctuations, to this minimum. Now that we have arrived at an understanding of the most gen eral laws which regulate wages like the price of any other commod ity, we can go into our subject more specifically.
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III Capital consists O'f raw materials, instruments of labour and means o f subsistence of all kinds, which are utilised in order to pro duce new raw materials, new instruments of l abour and new means of subsistence . All these component parts of capital are creations of labour, products of labour, accumula ted labour. Accumulated labour which serves as a means of new production is capital . So say the economists. What is a Negro slave? A man of the black race. The one expla. nation is as good as the other. A Negro is a Negro. He only becomes a slave in certain relations . A cotton-spinning jenny is a machine for spinning cotton . I t becomes capital o n l y in certain relations. Torn from these relation ships it is no more capital than gold in itself is money or s ugar the price of sugar. In production, men not only act on nature but also on one another. They produce only by co-operating in a certain way and mutually exchanging their activities. In order to produce, they enter into definite connections and relations with one another and only within these social connections and relations does their action on nature, does production, take place. These social rela,tions into which the producers enter with one another, the conditions under which they exchange their activities and participate in the whole act of production, will naturally vary according to the character of the means of production . \\lith the invent.i on of a new instrument of warfare, firearms, the whole inter nal organisation of the army necessarily changed; the relationships \vithin which individuals can constitute an army and act as an army were transformed and the relations of different armies to one another also changed . Thus the social relations within which individuals produce, the social relations of production, change, are transformed, with the change and development of the material means of production, the productive forces. The relations of production in their totality con stitute what are called the social relations, society, and, specifically; a society at a definite stage of historical development, a society with a peculiar, distinctive character. Ancient society, feudal society, bourgeois society are such totalities of p roduction relations, each of which at the same time denotes a special stage of development in t h e history of mankind. Capital, also, is a social relation o f production . I t is a bourgeois production relation, a production relation of bourgeois society.. Are not the means of subsistence, the instruments of labour, the raw
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materials of which capital consists, produced and accumulate d under given social conditions, in definite social relations? Are they not utilised for new production under given social conditions, in definite social relations? And is i t not j ust this definite social char acter which turns the products serving for ne w production into
capital? Capital consists not only of means of subsistence, instruments of labour and raw materials, not only of material products; it consists just as much of exchange values. All the products of which it con sists are commodities. Capi tal is, therefore, not only a sum of mate rial products; it is a sum of commodities, of exchange values, of
social magnitudes. Capital remains the same, whether we put cotton in place of wool, rice in place of wheat or steamships in place of railways, pro vided only that the cotton, the rice, the steams hips-the body of capital-have the same exchange value, the same price as the wool, the wheat, the railways in which it was previously incorporated. The body of capital can change continually wi thout the capital suf fering the slightest alteration . But while all capital i s a sum of commooities, that is, of exchange values, not every sum of commodities, of exchange values, is capital . Every sum of exchange values is an exchange value. Every s ep arate exchange value i s a sum of exchange values. For instance, a house that is worth 1 ,0 0 0 marks is an exchange value of 1 , 0 0 0 marks. A piece of paper worth a pfennig i s a sum of exchange values of one-hundred hundredths of a pfennig . Products which are exchangeable for others are commodi ties. The particular ratio in w h i ch they are exchangeable constitutes their exchange value or, expressed in money, their pri ce. The quantit y of these products can change nothing in their quality of being commodities or represent ing an exchange value or having a definite price . \Vhether a tree is large or small it is a tree. \Vhether we exchange iron for other products in ounces or in hundred-weights, does this make any difference in its character as commodity, as exchange value? It is a commodity of greater or lesser value, of higher or lower price, depending upon the quantity. How, then, does any amount of commodities, of exchange value, become capital? B y maintaining and multiplying itself as an independent social power, that is, as the power of a portion of society, by means of its exchange for direct, living labour power. The existence of a class which possesses nothing but its capacity to labour is a necessary prerequisite of capi tal. It is only the domination of accumula ted, past, material ised
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209
l abo ur over direct, living labour that turns accumulated labour into capital . Capital does not consist in accumulated labour serving living labour as a means for new production . It consists in living labour serving accumulated labour as a means of maintaining and multi plying the exchange value of the latter. \Vhat takes place in the exchange between capitalist and wage worker? The worker receives means of subsistence in exchange for his labour power, but the capitalist receives in exchange for his means of subsistence labour, the productive activity of the worker, the creative power whereby the worker not only replaces what he con sumes but gives. to the accumulated labour a greater value than it previously possessed. The worker receives a part of the available means of subsistence from the capitalist. For what p urpose do these means of subsistence serve him? For immediate consumption. As soon, however, as I consume the means of subsistence, they are irre trievably lost to me unless I use the time during which I am kept alive by them in order to produce new means of subsistence, in order during consumption to create by my labour new values in place of the values which perish in being consumed . But it is just this noble reproductive power that the worker surrenders to the capi talist in exchange for means of subsistence received. He has, there fore, lost it for himself. Let us take an example : a tenant farmer gives his day labourer five silver groschen a day. For th ese five silver groschen the labourer works all day on the farmer's field and thus secures him a return of ten silver groschen. The farmer not only gets the value replaced tha t he has to give the day labourer; he doubles i t . He has therefore employed, consumed, the five silver groschen that he gave to the labourer in a fruitful, productive manner. He has bought with the five silver groschen just that labour and power of the labourer which produces agricultural products of double value and makes ten silver groschen out of five. The day labourer, on the other hand, receives in place oJ his productive power, the effect of which he has bargained away to the farmer, five silver groschen, which he exchanges for means of subsistence, and these he consumes with greater or less ' rapidity. The five silver groschen have, therefore, been cons umed in a double way, reproductively for capital, for they have been exchanged for labour power which produced ten silver groschen, unproductively for the worker, for they have been exchanged for means of subsistence which have disappeared forever and the value of which he can only recover by repeating the same exchange with the farmer. Thus capital presupposes wage labour; wage labour pre supposes capital. They reciprocally condition the existence of each
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The Critique of Capitalism
o.ther; they reciprocally bring forth each other. Daes a warker in a cattan factary produce merely cattan textiles? No., he produces capital. He produces values which serve afresh to. cammand his labaur and by means af it to. create new values . Capital can anly increase by exchanging itself far labaur pawer, by calling wage labaur to. life. The labaur pawer af the wage-worker can only be exchanged for capital by increasing capital, 'by strength ening the power whase slave it is. Hence, increase of capital is increase of the proletariat, that is, of the working class. The interests of the capitalist and thase af the worker are, there fare, one and the same, assert the baurgeais and their ecanamists . Indeed! The warker perishes if capital daes nat emplay him. Capi tal perishes if it daes nat explait labaur power, and in order to exploit it, it must buy i t. The faster capital intended far produc tian, productive capital, increases, the more, therefare, industry prospers, the more the baurgeaisie enriches itself and the better business is, the more workers daes the capitalist n eed, the mare dearly daes the warker sell himself. The indispensable canditian for a talerable situatian af the warker is, therefore, the fastest possible growth of productive capital. But what is the growth af productive capital? Growth af the pawer af accumulated labaur aver living labaur. Growth af the daminatian af the bourgeaisie aver the warking class . H wage labaur produces the wealth af athers that rules aver it, the power that is hostile to i t, capital, then the means af employment, the means af subsistence, flaw back to. it from this hastile pawer, on conditian that it makes itself afresh into. a part of capital, into the lever which hurls capital anew into. an accelerated mavement af grawth. To say that the interests af capital and thase ot the workers are one and the same is only to say that capital and wage labour are two sides of one and the same relation. The one conditions the other, just as usurer and squanderer condition each other. As lang as the wage-warker is a wage-warker his lat depends up an capital. That is the much-vaunted cammunity af interests between warker and capitalist.
IV I f capital grows, the mass af wage labaur grows, the number af wage-workers grows; in a ward, the daminatian of capital extends over a greater number of individuals. * * * *
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To say that the warker has an interest in the rapid growth af capital is anly to. say that the mare rapidly the warker increases the
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211
we alth o f others, the richer will be the crumbs that fall to him, the greater is the number of workers that can be employed and called . ·into existence, the more can the mass of slaves dependent on capita l be increased. \Ve have thus seen that: Even the most favourable situation for the working class, the most rapid possible growth of capital, however much it may improve the material existence of the worker, does not remove the antagonism between his interests and the interests of the bour geoisie, the interests of the capitalists. Profit and wages remain as before in inverse porportion. If capital is growing rapidly, wages may rise; the profit of capital rises incomparably more rapidly. The material position of the worker has improved, but at the cost of his social position . The social gulf that divides him from the capitalist has widened. Finally : To say tha t the most favourable condition for wage labour is the most rapid possible growth of productive capital is only to say that the more rapidly the working class increases and enlarges the power that is hostile to it, the wealth that does not belong to it and that rules over it, the more favourable will be the conditions under which it is allowed to labour anew at increasing bourgeois wealth, at enlarging the power of capital, content with forging for itself the golden chains by which the bourgeoisie drags it in its train.
v Are growth of productive capital and rise of wages really so insep arably connected as the bourgeois economists maintain? We must not take their word for it. We must not even believe them when they say that the fatter capital is, the better will its slave be fed. The bourgeoisie is too enlightened, it calculates too well, to share the prejudices of the feudal lord who makes a display by the bril liance of his retinue. The conditions of existence of the bourgeoisie compel it to calculate. We must, therefore, examine more closely: How does the growth of productive capital affect wages? If, on the whole, the productive capital of bourgeois society grows, a more manifold accumulation of labour takes place. The capitals increase in number and extent. The numerical increase of the capitals increases the competition between the capitalists. The increasing extent of the capitals provides the means for bringing more powerful labour armies with more gigantic instruments of war into the industrial battlefield. One capitalist can drive another from the field and capture his capital only by selling more cheaply. In order to be able to sell
21 2
The Critique of Capitalism
more cheaply without ruining himself, he must produce more cheaply, that is, raise the productive power of labour as much as possibl e . But the productive power of labour is raised, above all, b y a greater division of labour, by a more universal introduction and continual improvement o f machinery. The greater the labour army among whom labour is divided, the more gigantic the scale on which machinery is introduced, the more does the cost of 'produc tion proportionately decrease, the more fruitful is labour. Hence, a general rivalry arises among the capitalists to increase the division of labour and machinery and to exploit them on the greatest possi ble scale. If, now, by a greater division of labour, by the utilisation of new machines and their improvement, by more profitable and extensive exploitation of natural forces, one capitalist has found the means of producing with the same amount of labour or of accumulated labour a greater amount of products, of commodities, than his com petitors, if he can, for example, produce a whole yard of linen in the same labour time in which his competitors weav e half a yard, how will this capitalist operate? He could continue to sell half a yard of linen at the old market price; this would, however, be no means of driving his opponents from the field and of enlarging his own sales . But in the same measure in which his production has expanded, his need to sell has also increased. The more powerful and costly means of production that he has called into life enable him, indeed, to sell his commodi ties more cheaply, they compel him, however, at the same time to sell more commodities, to conquer a much larger market for his commodities; consequently, our capitalist will sell his half yard of linen more cheaply t h a n his competitors. The capitalist will not, however, sell a whole yard as cheaply as his competitors sell h alf a yard, although the production of the whole yard does not cost him more than the half yard costs the others . Otherwise he would not gain anything extra but only get back the cost of production by the exchange. His possibly greater income would be derived from the fact of having set a larger capital into motion, but not from having made more of his capital than the others. Moreover, he attains the object he wishes to attain, if he puts the price of his goods only a small percentage lower than that of his competitors . He drives them ·from the field, he wrests from them at least a part of their sales, by underselling them. And, finally, it will be remembered that the current price always stands above or below t he cost of production, according to whether the sale of the commodity occurs in a favourable or unfavourable indus trial season. The percentage at which the capitalist who h as employed new and more fruitful means of production sells above
Wage Labour and Capital
213
his real cost o f production will vary, depending upon whether the market price of a yard of linen stands below or above its hitherto customary cost oJ production. However, the privileged position of our capitalist is not of long duration; other competing capitalists introduce the same machines, the same division of labour, introduce them on the same or on a larger scale, and this introduction will become so general that the price of linen is reduced not only below its old, but below its new cost of production. The capitalists find themselves, therefore, in the same position relative to one another as before the introduction of the new means of production, and if they are able to supply by these means double the production at the same price, they are now forced to supply the double product below the old price. On the basis of this new cost of production, the same game begins again . :More division of labour, more machinery, enlarged scale of exploitation oJ machinery and division of labour. And again competition brings the same counteraction against this result. We see how in this way the mode of production and the means of production a re continually transformed, revolutionised, how the division of labour is necessarily followed by greater division of labour, the application of machinery by still greater application of machinery, work on a large scale by work on a still larger scale. That is the law which again and again throws bourgeois produc tion out of its old course and which compels capital to intensify the productive forces of labour, because it has intensified them, it, the law which gives capital no rest and continually whispers in its ear : "Go on! Go on! " Thi s law i s none other than that which, within the fluctuations of trade periods, necessarily levels out the price o f a commodity to its cost of production. However powerful the means of production which a capitalist brings into the field, competition will make these means of produc tion universal and from the moment when it has made them uni versal, the only result of the greater fruitfulness of his capital is that he must now supply for the same price ten, twenty, a h undred times as much as before. But, as he must sell perhaps a thousand times as much as before in order to outweigh the lower selling price by the greater amount of the product sold, because a more exten sive sale is now necessar)', not only in order to make more profit but in order to replace the cost of production-the instrument of production itself, as we have seen, becomes more and more expen sive-and because this mass sale becomes a question of life and death not only for him but also for his rivals, the old struggle begins again all the more violently the more fruitful the already dis-
214
The Critique of Capitalism
covered means of production are. The division of labour and the application of machinery, therefore, will go on anew on an incom parably greater scale. V/hatever the power of the means of production employed may be, competition seeks to rob capital of the golden fruits of this power by bringing the price of the commodities back to the cost of production, by thus making cheaper production-the supply of ever greater amounts of products for the same total price-an impera tive law to the same extent as production can be cheapened, that is, as more can be p roduced with the same amount of labour. Thus the capitalist would have won nothing by his own exertions but the obligation to supply more in the same labour time, in a word, more difficult conditions for the augmentation of the value of his capital. While, therefore, competition continually pursues him with its law of the cost of production and every weapon that he forges against his rivals recoils against himself, the capitalist continually tries to get the better of competition by incessantly introducing new machines, more expensive, it is true, but producing more cheaply, and new division of labour in place of the old, and by not waiting until competition has rendered the new ones obsolete. If now we picture to ourselves this feverish simult�neous agita tion on the whole world market, it will be comprehensible how the growth, accumulation and concentration of capital results in an uninterrupted division of labour, and in the application of new and the perfecting of old machinery precipitately and on an ever more gigantic scale. But how do these circumstances, which are inseparable from the growth of productive capital, affect the determination of wages? The greater division of labour enables o ne worker to do the work of five, . ten or twenty; it therefore multiplies competition among the workers fivefold, tenfold and twentyfold . The workers do not only compete by one selling himself ch eaper than another; they compete by o ne doing the work of five, ten, twenty; and the divi� sion of labour, introduced by capital and continually increased, compels the workers to compete among themselves in this way. Further, as the division of labour increases, labour is simplified. The special skill of the viorker becomes \I;'orthless . He becomes transformed into a simple, monotonous productive force that does not have to use intense bodily or intellectual facultie s . His labour becomes a labour that anyone can perform. Hence, competitors crowd upon him on all sides, and besides we remind the reader that the more simple and easily learned the labour is, the lower the cost o f p roduction needed to master it, the lower do wages sink, for, like the price of every other commodity, they are determ ined by the cost of production. Therefore, as labour becomes more unsatisfying, more repulsive,
Wage Labour and Capital
215
competition increases and wages decrease. The worker tries t o keep up the amount of his \vages by working more, whether by working longer hours or by producing more in one hour. Driven by want, therefore, he still further increases the evil effects of the division of labour. The result is that the more he works the less wages he receives, and for the simple reason that he competes to that extent with his fellow workers, hence makes them into so many competi tors who offer themselves on just the same bad terms as he does himself, and that, therefore, in the last resort he competes with himself, with himself as a member of the working class. Machinery brings about the same results on a much greater scale, by replacing skilled workers by unskilled, men by women, adults by children. It brings about the same results, where it is newly intro duced, by throwing the hand workers on to the streets in m asses, and, where it is developed, improved and replaced by more produc tive machinery, by discharging workers in smaller batches. We h ave portrayed above, in a hasty sketch, the industrial war of the capital ists among themselves; this war has the peculiarity that its battles are won less by recruiting than by discharging the army of labour. The generals, the capitalists, compete with one another as to who can discharge most soldiers of industry. The economists tell us, it is true, that the workers rendered superfluous by machinery find new branches of employment. They dare not assert directly that the same workers who are dis charged find places in the new branches of labour. The facts cry out too loudly against this lie. They really only assert that new means of employment will open up for other component sections of the working class, for instance, for the portion of the young generation of workers that was ready to enter the branch of indus try which has gone under. That is, of course, a great consolation for the disinherited workers. The worshipful capitalists will never want for fresh exploitable flesh and blood, and will let the dead bury their dead. This is a consolation which the bourgeois give themselves rather than one which they give the workers. If the whole class of wage-workers were to be abolished owing to machine ery, h ow dreadful that would be for capital which, without wage labour, ceases to be capital! Let us suppose, however, that those directly driven out of their jobs by machinery, and the entire section of the new generation that was already on the watch for this employment, find a new occu pation. Does any one imagine that it will be as highly paid as that which has been lost? That would contradict all the laws of econom ics. \Ve have seen how modern industry always brings with it the substitution of a more simple, subordinate occupation for the more complex and higher one. How, then, could a mass of workers who have been thrown out
216
The Critique of Capitalism
of one branch of industry owing to machinery find refuge in another, unless t4e latter is lower, worse paid? The workers who work in the manufacture of machinery itself have been cited as an exception . As soon as more machinery is demanded and used in industry, it is said, there must necessarily be an increase of machines, consequently of the manufacture of machines, and consequently of the employment of workers in th e man ufacture of machines; and the workers engaged in this branch of industry are claimed to be skilled, even educated workers . Since the year 1840 this assertion, which even before was only half true, has lost all semblance of truth because ever more versatile machines have been employed in the manufacture of machinery, no more and no less than in the manufacture of cotton yarn, and the workers employed in the machine factories, confronted by highly elaborate machines, can only play the part of highly unelaborate machines. But in place of the man who has been discharged owing to the machine, the factory employs maybe three children and one woman . And did not the man's wages have to suffice for the three children and a woman? Did not the minimum of wages have to suffice to maintain and to propagate the race? What, then, does this favourite bourgeois phrase prove? Nothing more than that now four times as many workers' lives are used up in order to gain a livelihood for one worker's family. Let us sum up: The more productive capital grows, the more the division of labour and the application of machinery expands. The more the division of labour and the application of machinery expands, the more competition among the workers expands and the more their wages contract. In addition, the working class gains recruits from the higher strata of society also; a mass of petty industrialists and small ren tiers are hurled down into its ranks and have nothing better to do than urgently stretch out their arms alongside those of the workers. Thus the forest of uplifted arms demanding work becomes ever thicker, while the arms themselves become ever thinner. That the small industrialist cannot survive in a contest one o f t h e first conditions of which is to produce on a n ever greater scale, that is, precisely to be a large and not a small industrialist, is self eviden t . That the interest on capital decreases in t h e same measure as the mass and number of capitals increase, as capital grows; that, there fore, the small rentier can no longer live on his interest but m ust throw himself into industry, and, consequently, help to swell the ranks of the small industrialists and thereby of candidates for the proletariat-all this surely requires no further explanation .
\Vage Labour and Capital
217
Finally, a s the capitalists are compelled, by the movement described above, to exploit the already existing gigantic means of production on a larger scale and to set i n motion a l l the mainsprings of credit to this end, there is a corresponding increase in industrial earthquakes, in which the trading world can only maintain itself by sacrificing a part of wealth, of products and even of productive forces to the gods of the nether world-in a word, crises increase. They become more frequent and more violent, if .only because, as the mass of production, and conse quently the need for extended markets, grows, the world market becomes more and more contracted, fewer and fewer new markets remain available for exploitation, since every preceding crisis has subjected to world trade a market hitherto unconquered or only superficially exploited. But capital does not live only on labour. A lord, at once aristocratic and barbarous, it drags with it into the grave the corpses of its slaves, whole hecatombs of workers who perish in the crises. Thus we see: if capital grows rapidly, competi tion among the workers grows incomparably more rapidly, that is, the means of employment, the means of subsistence, of the work ing class decrease proportionately- so much the more, and, neverthe less, the rapid growth of capital is the most favourable condition for wage labour.
The Coming Upheaval KARL t\1ARX This concluding passage from Marx's anti-Proudhon tract The Poverty of
Philosophy (1847) closes a discussion which takes England as the repre sentative case of a revolution-bent country_ It gives a vivid preview of the
revolutionary upheaval towards which Marx believed that the class struggle in all capitalist countries was irresistibly moving_ It was, in a way, Capital's conclusion stated in advance. Note the Hegelian terminology in Marx's depiction of the proletariat becoming, in and through the warfare of labor and capital, a class not only in itself but also "for itself," i.e., collectively conscious of itself and its revolutionary aims as a class_
'"
'"
'"
Economic conditions first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers_ - The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself_ The inter ests it defends become class interests . B ut the struggle of class against class is a political struggle. An oppressed class is the vital condition for every society founded on the antagonism of classes . The emancipation of the oppressed class thus implies necessarily the creation of a new society. For the oppressed class to be able to emancipate itself it is necessary that the productive powers already acquired and the existing social reI tions should no longer be capable of existing side by side_ Of all the instruments of p roduction, the greatest productive power is the rev olutionary class itself_ The organization of revolutionary elements as a class supposes t h e existence of a l l the productive forces which could be engendered in the bosom of the old society. Does this mean that after the fall of the old society there will be a new class domination culminating in a' new political power? No . The condition for the emancipation of the working class is the abolition of every class, just as the condition for the liberation of the third estate, of the bourgeois order, was the abolition of all estates and all orders . The working class, in the course of its development, will substi tute for the old civil society an association which will exclude 218
The Coming Upheaval
219
classes and their antagonism, and there will b e no more political power properly so called, since political power is precisel y the official expression of antagonism in civil society. Meanwhile the antagonism between the proletariat and the bour geoisie is a struggle of class against class, a struggle which carried to its highest expression is a total revolution. Indeed, is it at all surpris ing that a society founded' on the opposition of classes sho uld cul minate in brutal "contradiction," the shock of body against body, as its final denouement? Do not say that social movement excludes political movement. There is never a political movement which is not at the same time social . It is only in an order of things in which there are no more classes and class antagonisms that "social evolutions" will cease to be "political revolutions." Till then, on the eve of every general reshuf fling of society, the last word of social science will always be: ' Combat or death : bloody struggle or extinction. It is thus that the question is inexorably put.1 1. George Sand, Jean Ziska. A Historical Novel.
Class Struggle and Mode of Production KARL MARX A brief but notable statement by Marx of what he considered most innovative in his analysis of the human historical process occurs in a letter of March 5,
1852., to his friend Joseph \Veydemeyer, then living
in New York.
* * * And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discover ing the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them . Long before me bourgeois h istorians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bo u r geois econ omists the economic anatomy of the classes. \Vhat I did that was new was to prove: 1) that th � existence of classes is only boun d up w ith particular historical phases in the development of production, 2) that the class str uggle necessaril y leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, 3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the tran sition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.
220
The Grundrisse KARL MARX Comprising seven notebooks written in
1857-58,
this preparatory effort
by Marx to put together the results of his economic studies was first pub lished by the Institute of Marx-Engels-Lenin in. Moscow in 1939-41 as
Foundations (Grundrisse) of the Critique of Political Economy. In recent years it has attracted growing attention because of the intrinsic interest of various parts, because it forms an important link between the early writ ings and Capital, and because the very rawness of much of the text en hances its value as a revelation of Marx's creative mental process." The great bulk of it consists of an Introduction, a "Chapter on Money," and· a "Chapter on Capital." The Introduction, which appears here in full, and several selections from the "Chapter on Capital" have been chosen partly for what they add to the study of Capital. The reader not yet familiar with the basic argument of Capital may therefore prefer to turn first to that work, below, and then return to the Grundrisse. The Introduction, besides stating Marx's view of the method of political economy, develops his thesis on production as the basic category; shows
( in
the final paragraph of its third section) that the work on which he was embarked, and which later came to fru ition in Capital, was no more than
one part of a more ambitious total project; and concludes with a discussion of the timeless character of great art. Section B defines "society." Section C deals with capitalism as incessant drive for surplus value and alludes to future communism as a society in which labour "appears no longer as labour, but as the full development of activity itself .... " Section D sup
lements Capital on primitive accumulation. Section E deals with pre-capi
talist economies and the birth of capitalism. Section F summarizes Marx's views on population and Malthus. Section G cQntains a now-famous discus sion of ever-increasing automation under capitalism.*'" Section H envisages capitalism's ultimate violent overthrow. Section I contrasts the alienation of labour under capitalism with the postulated ending of alienation in the future. In these and other passages of the Grundrisse Marx here and there uses the "alienation" terminology which had been pervasive in the 1844 manuscripts but would grow inconspicuous in Capital. The translation and footnotes are by Martin Nicolaus. The capitalized letters and section headings following the Introduction have been added by the editor of this reader_ • This last point is made compellingly by Martin Nicolaus in his informative Foreword to Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, translated by Martin Nicolaus (New York: Vintage, 1973), p. 7_ The same point could be made with reference to the 1844 manuscripts.
221
•• Some have interpreted these passages as heralding the end of manual labour under capitalism. Nicolaus (Foreword, p_ 52) objects that "neither here nor anywhere else in Marx's work is there a prediction that IT.nual industrial labour will be abolished in industrial so ciety .... "
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The Critique of Capitalism
A. In traduction (1) PRODUCTION Independe nt Individuals . Eighteenth-Century Ideas The object before us, to begin with, material production. I ndividuals producing in society-hence socially determined indi vidual production-is, of course, the point of departure. The indi vidual and isolated hunter and fisherman, with whom Smith and Ricardo begin, belongs among the unimaginative conceits of the eighteenth-century �obinsonades,l which in no way express merely a reaction against over-sophistication and a return to a misunder s tood natural life, as cultural historians imagine. As little as Rous seau's contrat social, which brings naturally independent, autono mous subjects into relation and connection by contract, rests on such naturalism. This is the semblance, the merely aesthetic sem blance, of the Robinsonades, great and small. It is, rather, the antici pation of "civil society," in preparation since the sixteenth century and making giant strides towards maturity in the eighteenth. In this society of free competition, the individual appears detached from the natural bonds etc . which in earlier historical periods make him the accessory of a definite and limited human conglomera te . Smith and Ricardo still stand with both feet on the shoulders of the eight eenth-century prophets, in whose imaginations this eighteenth-cen tury individual-the product on one side of the dissolution of the feudal forms of society, on the other side of the new forces of pro duction developed since the sixteenth century-appears as an ideal, whose existence they project into the past; �No t as a historic result but as history's point of departure. As the Naturaf1i1cTiVidilal appiO-' priate to theTrnOtiOTi-df-human'nature, not arising historically, but posited by nature. Ihis".illllsion. has····6een-.comm.9p._�� c::":<::h new .epqc:.h...to this day. Steuart2 avoided this simple-mindedness because " ' " as an ai{S"tocri( -a nd i n antithesis to the eighteenth century, h e had in some respects a more historical footing. The more deeply we go back into history, the more does the indi vidual, and hence also the producing individual, appear as depend , ent, as belongmg to a greater whole: in a still quite natural way i n ....
1. Utopias o n the lines o f Defoe's Rob. inson Crusoe, 2. Sir James Steuart ( 1 7 1 2-80), "the rational exponent of the Monetary and Mercantile System" (Marx), an adher ent of the Stuart cause who went into
exile in 1 74 5 . and pursued economic studies on the Continent. Author of An lnquiry into the Principles 0/ Political Economy ( London, 1 76 7,2 vols.; Dub lin, 1 7 70, 3 vols.-the edition used by Marx).
The Grundrisse
223
the family and in the family expanded into the clan [Stamm]; then later in the various forms of communal society arising out of the antitheses and fusions of the clans. Only in th e eighteenth cen tury, in "civil society," do the various forms of social connectedness confront the individual as a mere means towards h is private pur poses, as external necessity. But the epoch which produces this standpoint, that of the isolated individual, is also precisely that of the hitherto most developed social ( from this standpoint, general) relations. The human being is in the most literal sense a 'WOli '1/"OAtTLXOll,3 not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society. Production by an isolated individual outside society-a rare exception which may well occur when a civilized person in whom the social forces are already dynamically present is cast by accident into the wilder ness-is as much of an absurdity as is the development of language with out individuals living together and talking to each other. There is no point i n dwelling on this any longer. The point could go entirely unmentioned if this twaddle, which had sense and reason for the eighteenth-century characters, had not been earn , e stly pulled back into the centre of the most modern economics by Bastiat,4 Carey,5 Proudhon etc . Of course it is a convenience for Proudhon et al. to be able to give a historico-philosophic account of the source of a n economic relation, of whose h istoric origins he is ignorant, by inventing the myth that Adam or Prometheus stumbled on the idea ready-made, and then it was adopted, etc. Nothing is more dry and boring than the fantasies of a locus communis.6
Eternalization of historic relations of production.-Production and distribution in general.-Property Whenever we speak of p roduction, then, what is meant is always production at a definite stage of social development-production by social individuals. It might seem, therefore, that in order to talk about production at all we must either pursue the process of historic development through its different phases, or declare beforehand that we a re dealing with a specific historic epoch such as e.g. 3. A political animal.
4. Frederic Bastiat (1801-50), French
economist, and "modern bagman of Free Trade" ( M arx). A believer in Laissez-faire and the natural harmony of interests between labour and capital; a fierce opponent of socialism in theory and in practice (as deputy in the Con stituent and Legislative assemblies of 1848 to 1851). 5. Henry Charles Carey (1793-1879), American economist, opponent of Ri-
card ian pessimism ("Carey, who does not understand Ricardo"-Marx), be lieved in state intervention to establish harmony between the interests of labour a nd o f capital, a n d i n the ten dency o f real wages to rise. 6. O f a commonplace ( mind). Marx refers here to Bastiat's Harmonies economiques ( Paris, 1851), pp. 16-19, and Carey's Principles of Political Econ omy, Pt. I (Philadelphia, 1837), pp.
7-8.
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The Critique of Capitalism
modern bourgeois production, which is indeed our particular t.h eme. However, all epochs of production have certain common traits, common characteristics. Production in general is an abstraction, but a rational abstraction in so far as it really brings out and fixes the common element and thus saves us repetition. Still, this general cat egory, this common element sifted out by comparison, is itself seg mented many times over and splits into different determinations. Some determinations belong to all epochs,. others onl y to a few. [Some 1 determinations will be shared by the most modern epoch and the most ancient. No production will be thinkable without them; however, even though the most developed languages have laws and characteristics in common with the least developed, never theless, just those things which determine their development, i.e. the elements which a r e not general and common·, must be separated out from the determinations valid for production as such, so that i n their unity-which a rises already f r o m the identity of th e subject, h umanity, and of the object, nature-their essential difference is not forgotten . The whole profundity o f those modern economists who demonstrate the eternity and harmoniousness of the existing social relations lies in this forgetting. For example. No production possible without an instrument of p roduction, even if this instru ment is only the hand. No production witho ut stored-up, past labour, even if it is only the facility gathered together and concen trated in the hand of the savage by repeated practice. Capital is, among other things, also an instrument of production, also objecti fied, past labour. Therefore capital is a general, eternal relation of nature; that is, if I leave out just the specific quality which alone makes " instrument of p roduction" and "stored-up labour" into cap ital. The entire history of production relations thus appears to Carey, for example, as a malicious forgery perpetrated by govern ments . If there is no p roduction in general, then there is also no general production. Production is always a particular branch of production -e.g., agriculture, cattle-raising, manufactures etc.-or it is a total ity. politic.��y is not technology. The relation of the gene'ra characteristics of producbon at a given stage of social devel opment to the particular forms of production to be developed else where ( later ) . Lastly, production also is not only a particular pro duction. Rather, it is always a certain social body, a social subject, which is active in a greater or sparser totality of branches of produc tion. Nor does the relationship between scientific p resentation and the real movement belong here yet. Production in general. Particu la r branches of p roduction. Totality of production . It i s the fashion t o preface a work of economics with a general pa rt-and precisely th is part figures under the title "production"
�t
The Grundrisse
225
( see for example J. S. Mill ) 7 -treating of the general preconditions of all production . This general part consists or is alleged to consist of ( 1) the conditions without which production is not possible. I .e., in fact, to indicate nothing more than the essential moments o f all production. But, as we will see, this reduces itself in fact to a few very simple characteristics, which are hammered out into flat tautol ogies; ( 2 ) the conditions which promote production to a greater or lesser degree, such as e.g. Adam Smith 's progressive and stagnant state of sotiety. While this is of value in his work as an insight, to elevate it to scientific significance would require investigations into the periodization of degrees of productivity in the development of individual peoples-an investigation which lies outside the proper boundaries of the theme, but, in so far as it does belong there, must be brought in as part of the development of competition, accumula tion etc. In the usual formulation, the answer amounts to the gen eral statement that an industrial people reaches the peak of its pro duction at the moment when it arrives at its h istorical peak gener ally. In fact. The industrial peak of a people when its main concern is not yet gain, but rather to gain . Thus the Yankees over the Eng lish. Or, also, that e .g. certain races, locations, climates, natural con ditions such as harbours, soil fertility etc . are more advantageous to production than others. This too amounts to the tautology that wealth is more easily created where its elements are subjectively and objectively present to a greater degree. B ut none of all this is t h e economists' real concern in this general part. The aim is, rather, to present production-see e.g. Mill-as distinct from distribution etc., as encased in eternal natural laws independent of history, at which opportunity bourgeois relations are then quietly smuggled in as the inviolable natural laws on which society in the abstract is founded. This is the more or less conscious purpose of the whole proceeding. In distribution, by contrast, h umanity has allegedly permitted itself to. be considerably more ar bitrary. Quite apart from this crude tearing-apart of production and distribution and of their real relationship, i t must be apparent from the outset that, no matter how differently distribution· rriay have been arranged in different stages of social development, it must be possible h ere also, just as with production, to single out common characteristics, and j ust as possible to confound or to extinguish all historic differences under general human laws. For example, the slave, the serf and the wage labourer all receive a quantity of food which makes it possible for them to exist as slaves, 7. John Stuart Mill (1806-73), Eng lish political theorist and economist ; radical in politics, confusedly and eclec tically Ricardian in economics. His
Principles 0/ Political Economy ( Lon don, 1948), begin in Bk. I, Ch. I, wi th the analysis of production
.
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as serfs, as wage labourers . The conqueror who lives from tribute, or the official who lives from taxes, or the landed proprietor and his rent, or the mon k and his alms, or the Levite and his tithe, all receive a quota of social production, which is determined by other laws than that of the sla\'e's, etc. The two main points which all economists cite under this rubric are: (1 ) property; ( 2) its protec tion by courts, police, etc. To this a very short answer may be given: to 1. All production is appropriation of nature on the part of an individual within and through a specific form of society. In this sense it is a tautology to say that property ( appropriation) is a pre condition of production. But it is altogether ridiculous to leap from that to a specific form of property, e.g. private property. (\Vhich further and equally presupposes an antithetical form, non-property. ) History rather shows common property ( e.g. in India, among the Slavs, the early Celts, etc . ) to be the more original forln, a form which long continues to play a significant role in the shape of com munal property. The question whether wealth develops better in this or another form of property is still quite beside the point here. But that there can be no production and hence no society where some form of property does not exist is a tautology. An appropria tion which does not make something into property is a contradictio in subjecto. to 2. Protection of acquisitions etc . \Vhen these trivialities are reduced to their real content, they tell more than their preachers know. Namely that every form of production creates its own legal relations, form of government, etc . In bringing things which are organically related into an accidental relation, into a merely reflec tive connection, they display their crudity and lack of conceptual understanding. All the bourgeois economists are aware of is that production can be carried on better under the modern police than e.g. on the principle of might makes right. They forget only that this principle is also a legal relation, and that th e right of the stronger prevails in their "constitutional republics" as well, only in another form. When the social conditions corresponding to a specific stage of production are only just arising, or when they are already dying out, there are, naturally, disturbances in production, although to differ ent degrees and with different effects . To summarize : There are characteristics which all stages of pro duction have in common, and which are established as general ones by the mind; but the so-called general preconditions of all produc tion are nothing mote than these abstract moments with which no real historical stage of production can be grasped.
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(2) THE GENERAL RELATION OF PRODUCTION TO DISTRIBUTION, EXCHANGE, CONSUMPTION B efore going further in the analysis of production, it is necessary to focus on the various categories which the economists line up next to it. The obvious, trite notion: in production the members of society appropriate (create, shape) the products of nature in accord with human needs; distribution determines the proportion i n which the individual shares in the product; exchange delivers the particular products into which the individual desires to convert the portion which distribution has assigned to him; and finally, in consumption, the products become objects of gratification, of individual appropri ation. Production creates the objects which correspond to the given needs; distribution divides them up according to social laws; exchange further parcels out the already divided shares in accord with individual needs; and finally, in consumption, the p roduct steps outside this social movement and becomes a direct object and servant of individual need, and satisfies it in being consumed. Thus production appears as the point of departure, consumption as the conclusion, distribution and exchange as the middle, which is how ever itself twofold, since distribution is determined by society and exchange by individuals. The person objectifies himself in produc tion, the thing subjectifies itself in the person; in distribution, SOCiety mediates between production and consumption in the form of general. dominant determinants; in exchange the two are mediated by the chance characteristics of the individual . Distribution determines the relation in which products fall to individuals (th e amount ) ; exchange determines the production in which th e individual demands the portion allotted to him by distri bution . Th us production, distribution, exchange and consumption form a regular syllogism; production is the generality, distribution and' exchange the particularity, and consumption the singularity in which the whole is joined together. This is admittedly a coher� ence, but a shallow one. Production is determined by general natu ral laws, distributi,on by social accident, and the latter may therefore. promote production to a greater or lesser extent; exchange stands between the two as formal social movement; and the concluding act, consumption, which is conceived not only as a terminal point but also as an eIld-in-itself, actually belongs outside economics except in so far as it reacts in turn upon the point of departure and initiates the whole process anew.
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The opponents of the political economists-whether inside or outside its realm-who accuse them of barbarically tearing apart things which belong together, stand either on the same ground as they, or beneath them. Nothing is more common than the reproach that the political economists view production too much as an end in itself, that distribution is just as important. This accusation. is based precisely on the economic notion that the spheres ot distribution and of production are independent, autonomous neighbours Or that these moments were not grasped in their unity. As if this rup� ture had made its way not from reality into the textbooks, but rather from the textbooks into reality, and as if the task were the dialectic balancing of concepts, and pot the grasping of real rela tions ! .
Consumption and Production ( al ) Production is also i mmediately consumptio n . Twofold con sumption, subjective and objective : the individual not only develops his abilities in p roduction, but also expends them, uses them up in the act of production, just as natural procreation is a consumption of life forces . Secondly: consumption of the means of production, which become worn out through use, and a re partly ( e.g. in com bustio n ) dissolved into their elements again. Likewise, consumption of the raw material, which loses its natural form and composition by being used up . The act of production is therefore in all its moments also an act of consumption . But the economists admit this . Production as directly identical with c onsumption, and con sumption as directly c oincident w i t h production, is termed by them productive consumption. This identity of production and consump tion amounts to Spinoza's thesis : determinatio est negatio.8 But this definition of productive consumption i s advanced only for the purpose of separating cons u mption as identical with p r oduc tion from consumption proper, which is conceived rather as the destructive antithesis to production Let us therefore examine con sumption proper. Consumption is also immediately product i on j ust as in nature the consumption of the elements and chemical substances is the production of the plant. It is clear that in taking i n food, for exam ple, which is a form of consumption, the human being produces his own bod y But this is also true of every kind of consumption which i n one way or another produces huma,n beings in some particular aspect. Consumptive production. But, says economics, this produc
.
,
.
-
8. "Determination is negation," i.e., given the undi fferentiated self-identity o f the universal world substance. to attempt to introduce particular deter-
m inations is to negate this self-identity (Spinoza, Letters. No. 50. to ] . ]elles. 2 ]une 1 6 7 4 ) .
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tion which is identical with consumption is secondary, it is derived from the destruction of the prior product. In the former, the produ cer obj ectified h imself, in the latter, the object he created personi fies itself. Hence this consumptive production-even though i t is an immediate unity of production and consumption-is essentially dif ferent from production proper. The immediate unity in which pro. duction coincides with consumption and consumption with produc tion leaves their immediate duality intact. Production, then, is also immediately consumption, consumption is also immediately production. Each is immediately its opposite . But at the same time a mediating movement takes place between the two. Production mediates consumption; it creates the latter's material; without it, consumption would lack an object. But con sumption also mediates production, i n that it alone creates for the products the subject for whom they are products . The product only obtains its "last finish"9 in consumption. A railway on which no trains run, h ence which is not used up, not consumed, is a railway only BWd.P.ft,l and not in reality. vVithout production, no con sumption; but also, without consumption, no production; since pro duction would then be purposeless. Consumption produces produc tion i n a double way, (1) because a p roduct becomes a real p roduct only by being consumed. For example, a garment becomes a real garment only in the act of being worn; a house where no one lives is in fact not a real house; thus the product, unlike a mere natural object, proves itself to be, becomes, a product only through con sumption. Only by decomposing the product does consumption give the product the finishing touch; for the product is production not as2 objectified acti.vity, but rather only as object for the active sub ject; ( 2 ) because consumption creates the need for new production, that is it creates the ideal , internally impelling cause for production, which is its p resupposition. Consumption creates the motive for production; it also creates the object which is active i n production as its determinant aim . I £ . it is clear that production offers consump tion its external object, it is therefore equally clear that consump tion ideally posits the object of production as an internal image, as a need, as drive and as purpose. It creates the objects of production i n a still s ubjective form. No production without a need . But COD sumption reproduces the need. Production, for its part, correspondingly ( 1 ) furnishes the mate.. rial and the object for consumption.3 Consumption without an object is not consumption; therefore, i n this respect, production cre.. 9. In English in t h e original. 1. "Potentially." Cf. Aristotle, M eta physics, Bk. VIII, Ch. 6, p. 2 . 2 . T h e manuscript has : "for t h e prod-
uct i s production not only as . . . . " 3. The manuscript has " for produc tio n . H
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ates, produces consumption. ( 2 ) But the object is not the only thing which production creates for consumption . Production also gives consumption its specificity, its character, its finish . J ust as con_ sumption gave the product its finish as product, so does production give finish to consumption. Firstly, the object is not an object in general, but a specifi c object which must be consumed in a specific manner, to be mediated in its turn by production itself. Hunger is hunger, but the hunger gratified by cooked meat eaten with a knife and fork is a different hunger from that which bolts down raw meat with the aid of hand, nail and tooth . Production thus produces not only the object but also the manner of consumption, not only obj ectively but also subjectively. Production thus creates the con sumer. ( 3 ) Production not only supplies a material for the need, but it also supplies a need for the material. As soon as consumption emerges from its initial state of natural crudity and immediacy and, if it remained at that stage, this would be because production itself had been arrested there�it becomes itself mediated as a drive by the object. The need which consumption feels for the object is created by the perception of it. The object of a rt-like every other product-creates a public which is sensitive to art and enjoys beauty. Production thus not only creates an object for the subject, but also a subject for the obj ect. Thus production produces con sumption ( 1 ) by creating the material for it; ( 2 ) by determining the manner of consumption; and ( 3 ) by creating the products, ini tially posited by it as objects, in the form of a need felt by the con sumer. It thus produces the object of consumption, the manner of consumption and the motive of consumption. Consumption like wise produces the producer's inclination by beckoning to him as an aim-determining need. The identities between consumption and production thus appear threefold : ( 1 ) Immediate identity: Production is consumption, consump tion is production. Consumptive production. Productive consump tion . The political economists call both productive consumption . But then make a further distinction. The first figures as reproduc tion, the second as productive consumptio n . All investigations into the first concern productive or unproductive labour; investigations into the second concern productive or non-productive consumption. ( 2 ) [In the sense 1 that one appears as a means for the other, is mediated by the other : this is expressed as their mutual depend ence; a movement which relates them to one another, makes them appear indispensable to one another, but still leaves them external to each other. Production creates the material, as external object, for consumption; consumption creates the need, as internal object, as aim, for production. Without production no consumption; with-
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out consumption no production . [This identity] figures ill eco nomics in many different forms . ( 3 ) Not only is production immediately consumption and con s umption immediately p roduction, not only is p roduction a means for consumption and consumption the aim of production, i . e . each s upplies the other with its object (production supplying the external object of consumption, consumption the conceived object of pro duction ) ; but also, each of them, apart from being immediately the other, and apart from mediating the other, in addition to this cre a tes the other in completing itself, and creates itself as the other. Consumption accomplishes the act of production only in complet ing the product as product by dissolving it, by consuming its inde p endently material form, by raising the inclination developed in the first act of production, through the need for repetition, to its finished form; it is thus not only the concluding act in which the product becomes product, but also that in which the producer becomes producer. On the other side, production produces con sumption by creating the specific manner of consumption; and, fur ther, by creating the stimulus of cons umption, the ability to con sume, as a need. This last identity, as determined under ( 3 ) , [is] frequently cited in economics in the relation of demand and supply, of objects and needs, of socially created and natural needs. Thereupon, nothing simpler for a Hegelian than to posit produc tion and cons umption as identical. And this has been done not only by socialist belletrists but by prosaic economists themselves, e.g. Say4; in the form that when one looks at an entire people, its pro duction is its consumption. Or, indeed, at humanity in the abstract. Storch5 demonstrated Say's error, namely that e .g. a people does not consume its entire product, but also creates means of produc tion, etc ., fixed capital, etc. To regard society as one single subject is, in addition, to look at it wrongly; speculatively. With a single subject, production and consumption appear as moments of a single act. The important thing to emphasize here is only that, whether production and consumption are viewed as the activity of one o r of many individuals, they appear in any case as moments of one proc ess, in which production is the real point of departure and hence also the predominant moment. Consumption as urgency, as need, is itself an intrinsic moment of productive activity. But the latter is the point of departure for realization and h ence also its predomi_ 4.
Jean-Baptiste S a y ( 1 7 6 7 - 1 8 3 2 ) , "the inane Say," who "superficially condensed political economy into a textbook" ( Ma r x ) , a businessman who popular ized and vulgarized the doctrines of Adam Smith in his Traite d'economie politique ( Paris, 1 8 03 ) . ( 1 7 6 65 . Henrich Friedr ich Storch
1 8 3 5 ) , Pro fessor of Poli tical ECQnomy in the Russian Academy o f Sciences at St. Petersburg. Say issued Storch's work Cours d'economie politique w i th crit ical notes in 1 8 2 3 ; he attacked Say's interpretation o f his views in Consider ations sur l a nature du revenu national ( P aris , 1 8 2 4 ) , pp. 1 4 4- 5 9 .
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nant moment; it is the act through which the whole process again runs its course. The individual produces an object and, by consum ing it, returns to himself, but returns as a productive and self reproducing individual. Consumption thus appears as a moment of production. In society, however, the producer's relation to the produ�t, once the latter is finished, is an external one, and its return to the subject depends on his relations to other individuals. He does not come into possession of it directly. Nor is its immediate appropriation his purpose when he produces in society. Distribution steps between the producers and the products, hence between production and con s umption, to determine in accordance with social laws what the producer's share will be in the world of products . Now, does distribution stand at the side of and outside produc tion as an autonomous sphere?
Distribution and Production When one examines the usual works of economics, it is immedi ately striking that everything in them is posited doubly. For exam ple, ground rent, wages, interest and profit figure under distribution, while land, labour and capital figure under production as agents of production. In the case of capital, now, it is evident from the outset that it is posited doubly, ( 1 ) as agent of production, ( 2 ) as source o f income, as a determinant of specific forms of distribution. Inter est and profit thus also figure as such in production, i n so far as they are forms in which capital increases, grows, hence moments of its own production. Interest and profit as forms of distribution pre suppose capital as agent of production. They are modes of distribu tion whose presupposition is capital as agent of production . They are, likewise, modes of reproduction of capital . The category of wages, similarly, is the same as that which is examined under a different heading as wage labour: the characteris tic which labour here p ossesses as an agent of production appears as a characteristic of distribution. If la bour were not specified as wage labour, then the manner in which it shares in the products would not appear as wages; as, for example, under slavery. Finally, to take at once the most developed form of distribution, ground rent, by means of which landed property shares in the product, presupposes large-scale landed property ( actually, large-scale agriculture ) as agent of production, and not merely land as such, j ust as wages do not merely presuppose labour as such . The relations and modes of distribution thus appear merely as the obverse o f the agents of pro duction. An individual who participates in production in the form of wage labour shares in the products, in the results of production,
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in the form of wages . The structure [Gliederung] of distribution is completely determined by the structure of production . Distribu tion is itself a product of production, not only in its object, in that o nly the results of production can be distributed, but also i n its form, in that the specific kind of participation in production deter mines the specific forms of distribution, i.e. the pattern of participa tion in distribution. It is altogether an illusion to posit land in pro d uction, ground rent in distribution, etc . Thus, economists such as Ricardo, who are the most frequently accused of focusing on production alone, h ave defined distribution as the exclusive object of economics, because they instinctively con ceived the forms of distribution as the most specific expression into which the agents of production of a given society are cast. To the single individual, of course, distribution appears as a social law which determines his position within the system of production within which he produces, and which therefore precedes produc tion. Th e individual comes into the world possessing neither capital nor land. Social distribution assigns him at birth to wage labour. But this situation of being assigned is itself a consequence of the existence of capital and landed property as independent agents of production. As regards whole societies, distribution seems to precede produc tion and to determine it in yet another respect, almost as if it were a pre-economic fact. A conquering people divides the land among the conquerors, thus imposes a certain distribution and form of property in land, and th us determines production . Or it enslaves the conquered and so makes slave labour the foundation of production. Or a people rises in revolution and smashes the great landed estates into small parcels, and hence, by this new distribution, gives pro duction a new character. Or a system of laws assigns property i n land t o certain families in perpetuity, o r distributes labour [as] a hereditary privilege and thus confines it within certain castes . In all these cases, and they are all historical, it seems that distribution is not structured and determined by production, but rather the oppo site, production by distribution. I n the shallowest conception, distribution appears as the distribu tion of produc ts, and hence as further removed from and quasi-inde pendent of production. B ut before distribution can be the distribu tion of products, it is: ( I ) the distribution of the instruments of production, and ( 2 ) , which is a further specification of the same relation, the distribution of the members of the society among the different kinds of production. ( Subsumption of the individuals under specific relations of productiqn. ) The distribution of products is evidently only a result of this distribution, which is comprised within the process o f production itself and determines the structure
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of production . To examine production while disregarding this inter nal distribution within it is obviously an empty abstraction; while conversely, the distribution of products follows by itself from this distribution which forms an original moment of production. Ricardo, whose concern was to grasp the specific social structure of modern production, and who is the economist of production pal excellence, declares for precisely that reason that not production but distribution is th e proper study of modern economics .6 This again shows the ineptitude of those economists who portray production as an eternal truth while banishing history to the realm of distribution . The question of the relation between this production-determining distribution, and production, belongs evidently within production itself. If it is said that, since production must begin with a certain distribution of the instruments of production, i t follows that distri bution at least i n this sense precedes and forms the presupposition of production, then the reply must be that production does indeed have its determinants and preconditions, which form its moments. At the very beginning these may appea r as spontaneous, natural. B ut by the process of production itself they are transformed from natural into historic determinants, and i f they appear to one epoch as natural presuppositions of production, they were its historic prod uct for another. \Vithin production itself they a re constantly being changed. The application of machinery, for example, changed the distribution of instruments of production as well as of products. Modern large-scale landed property is itself the product of modern commerce and of modern industry, as well as of the application of the latter to agriculture. The questions raised apove all reduce themselves in the last instance to the role played by general-historical relations in produc tion, and their relation to the movement of history generally. The question evidently belongs within the treatment and investigation of production itself. Still, in the trivial form in which they are raised above, they can be dealt with equally briefly. I n a l l cases of conquest, three things a re possible. The conquering people subjugates the conquered under its own mode of production ( e.g. the English in I reland in this cen tury, and partly in India ) ; or it leaves the old mode intact and con tents itself with a tribute ( e.g. Turks and Romans ) ; or a reciprocal interaction takes place whereby something new, a synthesis, arises ( the Germanic conquests, in part ) . I n all cases, the mode of pro duction, whether that of the conquering people, that of the con quered, or that emerging from the fusion of both, is decisive for the new distribution which arises . Although the latter appears as a pre6. David Ricardo, Political Economy
On the Principles 0/ a lld
Taxation.
3 rd
e d . ( L o n d o n , 1 8 2 1 ) , preface, p. v.
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sup position of the new period of p roduction, it is thus itself in turn p roduct of production, not only of historical production generally, :' ; U but of the specific historic mode of p roduction. - ; . The Mongols, with their devastations in Russia, e.g., were acting ' . in accordance with their production, cattle-raising, for which vast uninhabited spaces are a chief precondition. The Germanic barbari a ns, who lived in isolation on the land and for whom agriculture with bondsmen was the traditional production, could impose these c onditions on the Roman provinces all the more easily as the conc en tration of landed property which had taken place there had already entirely overthrown t h e earlier agricultural relations. It is a received opinion that in certain periods people lived from p illage alone. But, for pillage to be possible, there must be some thing to be pillaged, hence production. And the mode of pillage is its elf in turn determined by the niode of production. A stock-job bin g nation, for example, cannot be pillaged in the same manner as a nation of cow-herds . To steal a slave is to steal the instrument of production directly . . B ut then the production of th e country for which the slave is stolen m ust be structured to allow of slave labour, or ( as in South America etc . ) a mode of production corresponding to the slave must be cre ated. Laws may perpetuate an instrument of production, e .g. land, in certain families. These Ia ws achieve economic significance only when large-scale landed property is in harmony with the society's production, as e.g. in England. In France, small-scale agriculture survived despite the great landed estates, h ence the latter were smashed by the revolution. But can laws perpetuate the small-scale allotment? Despite these laws, ownership is again becoming concen trated . The influence of laws in stabilizing relations of distribution, and hence their effect on production, requires to be determined in each specific instance.
;i:,::.�,
a
Exchange, Finally, and Circulation
Exchange and Production Circulation itself [is] merely a specific moment of exchange, or [it is] also exchange regarded in its totality. In so far as exchange is merely a moment mediating between pro duction with its production-determined distribution on one side and consumption o n the other, but in so far as the latter itself appears as a moment of production, to that extent is exchange obviously also included as a moment within the latter. I t is clear, firstly, that the exchange of activities and abilities
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which takes place within production itself belongs directly to pro duction and essentially constitutes i t. The same holds, secondly, for the exchange of products, in so far as that exchange is the means of finishing the product and making it fit for direct consumption. To that extent, exchange is an act comprised within p roduction itself. Thirdly, the so-called exchange between dealers and dealers is by its very organization entirely determined by production, as well as being itself a producing activity. Exchange appears as independent of and indifferent to production only in the final phase where the product is exchanged directly for consumption . But ( 1 ) there is no exchange without division of labour, whether the latter is spon taneous, natural, or already a product of historic development; ( 2. ) private exchange presupposes private production; ( 3 ) the intensity of exchange, as well as its extension and its manner, are determined by the development and structure of production. For example. Ex_ change between town and country; exchange in the country, in the town etc. Exchange in all its moments thus appears as e i ther directly comprised i n production or determined by it. The conclusion we reach is n ot that production, distribution, exchange and consumption are identical, but that they all form the members of a totality, distinctions within a unity. Production p re dominates not only over itself, in the antithetical definition of pro duction, but over the other moments as well. The process always returns to production to begin anew. That exchange and consump tion cannot be predominant is self-evident. Likewise, distribution as distribution of products; while as distribution of the agents of pro duction it is itself a moment of production. A definite production thus determines a definite consumption, distribution and exchange as well as definite relations between these different moments. Admittedly, hov.'ever, in its one-sided form, production is itself determined by the other moments. For example if the market, i .e. t h e sphere of exchange, expands, then production grows i n quantity and the divisions between its different branches become deeper. � change in distribution changes production, e.g. concentration of capital, different distribution of the population between town and country, etc. Finally, the needs of consumption determine produc tion. Mutual interaction takes place between the different moments. This the case with every organic whole.
( 3 ) TH E M ETHOD O F P O LITI CAL E CONOMY \Vhen we consider a given country politico-economically, we begin with its population, its distribution among classes, . town, country, the coast, the different branches of production, export and
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im port, annual p roduction a n d consumption, commodity prices etc . It seems to be correct to begin with the real and the concrete, \vith the real precondition, thus to begin, in economics, with e .g. th e population, which is the foundation and the subject of the en tire social act of production. However, on closer examination this p roves false. The population is an abstraction if I leave out, for eXample, the classes of which it is compose d . These classes in turn are an empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements on which they res t . E.g. wage labour, capital, etc . These latter in turn p resuppose exchange, division of labour, prices, etc. For example, capital is nothing without wage labour, with out value, money, price etc. Th us, if I were to begin with the population, this would be a chaotic conception [VorstellungJ of the whole, and I would then, b y means of further determination, move analytically towards ever more simple concepts [BegriffJ , from the imagined concrete towards ever thinner abstractioQs until I had arrived at the simplest determinations. From there the journey would have to be retraced until I had finally arrived at the population again, but this time not as the chaotic conception of a whole, but as a rich totality of many determinations and relations . The former is the path historically fol lowed by economics at the time of its origins. The economists of the seventeenth century, e.g., always begin with the living whole, with population, nation, state, several states, etc . ; but they always conclude by discovering through analysis a small number of deter minant, abstract, general relations such as division of labour, money, value, etc. As soon as these individual moments had been more or less firmly established and abstracted, there began the eco nomic systems, which ascended from the s imple rela tions, such as labour, division of labour, need, exchange value, to the level o f the state, exchange between nations and the world market. The latter is obviously the scientifically correct method. The concrete is concrete because i t is the concentration of many determinations, h ence unity of the diverse. It appears i n the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the point of departure in reality and hence also the point of departure for observation [AnschauungJ and concep tion. Along the first path the full conception was evaporated to yield an abstract determination; along the second, the abstract determinations lead towards a reproduction of the concrete by way of though t . In this way Hegel fell into the illusion of conceiving the real as the product of thought concentrating itself, probing its own depths, and unfolding itself out of itself, by itself, whereas the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is only the way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind. But this is by no means the process by which
23 8
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the concrete itself comes into being. For example, the simplest eco_ nomic category, say e .g. exchange value, presupposes populati o n, moreover a population producing in specific relations; as well as a certain kind of family, or commune, or state, etc . It can never exi st other than as an abstract, one-sided relation within an already given, concrete, living whole. As a category, by contrast, exchange value leads an antediluvian existence. Therefore, to the kind of conscio us_ ness-and this is characteristic of the philosophical consciousness for which conceptual thinking is the real h uman being, and for which the conceptual world as such is thus the only reality, the movement of the categories appears as the real act of production which only, unfortunately, receives a jolt from the outside-whose product is the world; and-but this is again a tautology-this is cor rect in so far as the concrete totality is a totality of thoughts, con crete in thought, in fact a product of thinking and comprehending; but not in any way a product of the concept which thinks and gen erates itself outside or above observation and conception; a product , rather, of the working-up of observation and conception into con cepts. The totality as it appears i n the h ead, as a totality of thoughts, is a p ro duct of a thinking h ead, which appropriates the world in the only way it can, a way different from the artistic, reli gious, practical and mental appropriation of this world. The real s ubject retains its autonomous existence outside the head j ust as before; namely as long as the head's conduct is merely speculative, merely theoretical . Hence, in the theoretical method, too, the sub ject, society, m ust always be kept in mind as the p resupposition . B u t d o not these simpler categories also have an independent his torical o r natural existence predating the more concrete ones? That depends . Hegel, for example, correctly begins the Philosophy of Righ t with possession, this being the subject's simplest juridical relation. But there is no possession preceding the family or master servant relations, which a-re far more concrete relations. However, it would be correct to say that there are families or clan groups which still merely possess, but have no property. The simple category therefore appears in relation to property as a relation of simple fam ilies or clan groups. In the highe r society it appears as the simpler relation of a developed organization . But the concrete substratum "of which possession is a relation is always presupposed. One can imag ine an individual savage as possessing something. Btlt in that case possession is not a j uridical relation. I t is incorrect that possession develops historically into the family. Possession, rather, always pre supposes this "more concrete j uridical category." There would still always remain this much, however, namely that the simple catego ries are the expressions of relations within which the less developed concrete may have already realized itself before having posited the
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connection or relation which is mentally expressed
'�itin the more conc rete category; while the more developed concrete �:li:(-b �serves th � san� e c � teg�ry as a subordin� te rel � tion. Money may .
�;!:;:: e J{ l s t, and dId eXIst histoncally, before capItal eXisted, before banks HiP exis ted; before wage labour existed, etc . Th us in this respect it may ;;F, be said that the simpler category can express the dominant relations ;r o f. a less developed whole, or else those subordina t e relations of a '> more developed whole which a l ready had a historic existence before ,:,>g . : this whole developed in the direction expressed by a more concrete ., ca tegory. To that extent the path of abstract thought, rising from 'j , th e simple to the combined, would correspond to the real historical process . It may be s a i d on t h e other h a n d tha t there are very developed but nevertheless historically less mature forms of society, in which the highest forms of economy, e.g. cooperation, a developed division 0> '. . of labour, etc., are found, even though there is no k ind of money, e.g. Peru. Among the Slav communities also, money and the . i.: e xchange which determines it play little or no role within the indi " . vidual communities, but only on their boundaries, in traffic with , ' . others; it is simply wrong to place e xc hange at the centre of communal society as the original, constituent element. It originally appears, rather, in the connection of the different communities with one another, not in the relations bet.w een the different members of a single community. Further, although money everywhere plays a role from very ea rly on, it is nevertheless a predominant element, in antiq u ity, only within the confines of certain one sidedly developed nations, t r ading nations . And even in the most advanced parts .of the ancient world, among the Greeks and Romans, the full develop ment of money, which is presupposed in modern bourgeois society, appears only in the period of their d i ssoluti o n Th is very simple cat egory, then, makes a historic appearance in its full intensity only in the most developed conditions of society. By no means does it wade its way through all economic relations . For example, in the Roman Empire, at its highest point of deve l opment, the foundation remained taxes and payments in kind. The money system a c t u ally completely developed there only in the army. And it never took over the whol e of labour. Thus, altho u gh the simpler category may have existed historically before the more concrete, it can achieve its full ( intensive and extensive ) de v elop m ent precisely in a combined form of s ociety, while the more concrete category was more fully developed in a less developed form of society. Labour seems a quite simple category. The concepti on of labour in this general form-as labour as such-is also immeasurably old . Nevertheless, when i t i s economically conceived i n this simplicity, "labour" is as modern a category as are the relations which create , ,'
-
.
240
The Critique of Capitalism
this simple abstractio n . The Monetary System,7 for example, still locates wealth altogether objectively, as an external thing, in money. Compared with this standpoint, the commercial, or manufacture, system took a great step forward by locating the source of wealth not in the object but in a subjective activity-in commercial and manufacturing activity-even though it still always conceives this activity within narrow boundaries, as moneymaking. In contrast to this system, that of the Physiocrats posits a certain kind of labour -agriculture-as the creator of wealth, and the object itself no longer appears in a monetary disguise, but as the product in general, as the general result of labour. This product, as befits the narrow ness of the activity, still always remains a naturally determined product-the product of agriculture, the product of the earth par excellence. . I t was an immense step forward for Adam Smith to throw out every limiting specification of wealth-creating activity-not only manufacturing, or commercial or agricultural labour, but one as \vell as the others, labour in general. With the abstract universality of wealth-creating activity we now have the universality of the object defined as wealth, the product as such or again labour as such, but labour as past, objectified labour. How difficult and great was this transition may be seen from how Adam Smith h imself from time to time still falls back into the Physiocratic system . Now, it might seem that all tha t had been achieved thereby was to discover the abstract expression for the simplest and most a ncient relation in which human beings-in whatever form of society-play the role of p roducers. This is correct in one respect. Not in another. Indiffer ence towards any specific kind of labour presupposes a very devel oped totality of real kinds of labour, of which no single one is any longer predominant. As a rule, the most general abstractions a rise only in the midst of the richest possible concrete development, where one thing appears as common to many, to all . Then it ceases to be thinkable in a particular form alone. On . the oth e r side, this abstraction of labour as such is not merely the mental product of a concrete totality of labours . I ndifference towards specific labours corresponds to a form of society in which individuals can with ease transfer from one labour to another, and where the specific kind is a matter of chance for them, hence of indifferenc e . Not only the cate gory, labour, but labour in reality has here become the means of 7 . M a r x considered t h a t the Monetary System, as defined here, covered econo mists from the sixteenth century to the P hysiocrats. However, within the Mone tary System there arose what he calls here the "commerc ial, o r manufacture system" but elsewhere the Mercantile System (known to economics textbooks
as Mercantilism ) . He distinguishes be tween the two systems later in this work, but his normal practice is to link them together, since "the Mercantile System is merely a variant o f the Monetary System" ( A Contribution t o the Crit ique oj Political Economy [London, 1 9 7 1 ] , p. 1 58).
The Grundrisse
241
creating wealth in general, and has ceased to be organically linked wi th particular individuals in any specific form. Such a state of affairs is at its most developed in the most modern form of exist ence of bourgeois society-in the United States . Here, then, for the first time, the point of departure of modern economics, namely the abstraction of the category "labour, " "labour as such , " labour pure and simple, becomes true in practice. The simplest abstraction, then, which modern economics places at the head of its discussions, and which expresses an immeasurably ancient relation valid in all forms of society, nevertheless achieves practical truth as an abstrac . tion only as a category of the most modern society. One could say that this indifference towards particular kinds of labour, which is a historic p roduct in the U nited States, appears e.g. among the Rus sians as a spontaneous inclination . But there is a devil of a differ ence between barbarians who are fit by nature to be used for any thing, and civilized people who apply themselves to everything. And then in practice the Russian indifference to the specific character of labour corresponds to being embedded by tradition within a very specific kind of labour, from which only external influences can jar them loose. This example of labour shows strikingly how even the most abstract categories, despite their validity-precisely because of their abstractness-for all epochs, are neverth el ess, in the specific charac ter of this abstraction, themselves likewise a product of historic rela tions, and possess their full validity only for and within these rela tions . Bourgeois society is the most developed and the most complex h istoric organization of production. The categories which express its relations, the comprehension of its structure, thereby also allows insights into the structure and the relations of production of all the vanished social formations out of whose ruins and elements it built itself up, whose partly still unconquered remnants are carried along within it, whose mere n uances have developed explicit significance within it, etc . Human anatomy contains a key t o the a natomy of the ape. The intimations of higher development among the subordinate animal species, however, can be understood only after the higher development is already known. The bourgeois economy thus sup plies the key to the ancient, etc . But not a t all in the manner of those economists who smudge over all historical differences and see bourgeois relations in all forms of society. One can understand trib ute, tithe, etc . , if one is acquainted with ground rent. B ut one m ust not identify them. Further, since bourgeois society is itself only a contradictory form of development, relations derived from earlier forms will often be found within it only in an entirely stunted form, or even travestied. For example, communal property.
242
The Critique of Capitalism
Although it is true, therefore, that the categories of bourgeois eco nomics possess a truth for all other forms of society, this is to be taken only with a grain of sal t . They can contain them in a devel oped, or stunted, or caricatured form etc., but always with an essen tial difference.The so-called historical presentation of development is founded, as a rule, on the fact that the latest form regards the previous ones as steps leading up to itself, and, since it is only rarely and only under quite specific conditions able to criticize itself leaving aside, of course, the historical periods which appear to them selves as times of decadence-it always conceives them one-sidedly. The Christian religion was able to be of assistance in reaching an objective understanding of earlier mythologies only when i ts own self-criticism had been accomplished to a certain degree, so to speak, 8uvap.fL . 8 Likewise, bourgeois economics arrived at an under standing of feudal, ancient, oriental economics only after the self criticism of bourgeois society had begun. I n so far as the bourgeois economy did not mythologically identify itself altogether with the past, its critique of the previous economics, notably of feudalism, with which it was still engaged in direct struggle, resembled the cri tique which Christianity levelled against paganism, or also that of Protestantism against Catholicism. In the succession of the economic categories, as in any other his torical, social science, it must not be forgotten that their subject here, modern bourgeois society-is always what is given, in the head as well as in reality, and that these categories therefore express the forms of being, the characteristics of existence, and often only indi vidual sides of this specific society, this subject, and that therefore this society by no means begins only at the point where one can speak of it (J£ such; this hold for science as well. This is to be kept in mind because it will shortly be decisive for the order and sequence of the categories. For example, nothing seems more natu ral than to begin with ground rent, with landed property, since this is bound up with the earth, the source of all p roduction and of all being, and with the first form of production of all more or less set tled societies-agriculture. But nothing would be more erroneous. In all forms of society there is one specific kind of production which predominates over the rest, whose relations thus assign rank and influence to the others . I t is a general illumination which bathes all the oth.er colours and modifies their particularity. It is a particular ether which determines the specific gravity of every being which has materialized within it. For example, with pastoral peoples ( mere hunting and fishing peoples lie outside the point where real development begins ) . Certain forms of tillage occur among them, sporadic ones . Landed property, is determined by this . It is hel d in 8.
See
p.
2 29, note 1 .
The
Grundrisse
243
common, and retains this form to a greater or lesser degree accord ing to the greater or lesser degree of attachment displayed by these peoples to their tradition, e.g. the communal property of the Slavs . Among peoples with a settled agriculture-this settling already a great step-where this predominates, as in antiquity and in the feudal order, even industry, together with its orga n ization and the forms of property corresponding to it, has a more or less landed-pro prietary character; is either completely dependent on it, as among the earlier Romans, or, as in the Middle Ages, imitates, within the city and its relations, the organization of the land. In the Middle Ages, capital itsel f-apart from pure money-capital-in the form of the traditional artisans' tools etc . , has this landed-proprietary charac ter. I n bourgeois society it is the opposite. Agriculture more and more becomes merely a branch of i ndustry, and is entirely domi nated by capita l . Ground rent likewise. In all forms where landed property rules, the natural relation still predominant . In th ose where capital rules, the social, historically created element . Ground rent cannot be understood without capita l . But capital can certainly be understood without ground rent. Capital is the all-dominating economic power of bourgeois society. It must form the starting point as well as the finishing-point, and must be dealt with before landed property. After both have been examined in part i cu lar, their interrelation must be examined. I t would therefore be unfeasible and wrong to let the econom�c categories follo\v one another in the same sequence as that in \vhich they .were h istorically decisive. Their sequence is determined, rather, by their relation to one another in modern bourgeois society, which is precisely the opposite of that which seems to be their natural order or which corresponds to historical development. The point is not the historic position of the economic relations in th e succession of different forms of society. Even less is it their sequence "in the . idea" ( Proudhon ) 9 (a muddy notion of h istoric movement ) . Rather, their order within modern bourgeois society. The purity ( abstract speci fi city ) in which the trading peoples Phoenicians, Carthaginians-appear in the old world is determined precisely by the predominance of the agricultural peoples . Capital, as trading-capital or as money-eap i tal, appears in this abstraction precisely where capital is not yet the predominant element of societies . Lombards, Jews take up the same position tov.:ards the agr i cultura l societies of the Middle Ages . As a further example of the diverge n t positions which the same category can occupy in differe n t social stages : one of the l a test forms of bourgeo i s society, ;oint-stock companies. These also appear,
9. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Systeme des contradictions ec oltomiques ou philoso-
phie de la misere
p. 1 4 6 .
( Paris, 1 8 4 6 ) , Vol. I .
244
The Critique of Capitalism
however, at its beginning, in the great, privileged monopoly trading companies . The concept of national wealth creeps into the work of the econ omists of the seventeenth century-continuing partly with those of the eighteenth-in the form of the notion that wealth is created only to enrich the state, and that its power is proportionate to this wealth . This was the still unconsciously hypocritical form in which wealth and the production of wealth proclaimed themselves as the purpose of modern states, and regarded these states h enceforth only as means for the production of wealth. The order obviously has to be ( 1 ) the general, abstract determi nants which obtain in more or less all forms of society, but in the above-explained sense . ( 2 ) The categories which make up the inner structure of bourgeois society and on which the fundamental classes rest. Capital, wage labour, landed property. Their interrelation. Town and country. The three great social classes . Exchange between th em. Circul atio n . Credit system ( p rivate ) . ( 3 ) Concen tration of bourgeois society in the form of the state. Viewed in rela tion to itself. The "unprod uctive" classes. Taxes. State debt. Public credit. The population. The colonies. Emigration. ( 4 ) The interna tional relation of production. International division of labour. Inter national exchange. Export and import. Rate of exchange . ( 5 ) The world market and crises . (4)
PRO D U C T I O N . MEANS OF PRODU C T ION AND
RE LATIONS OF PRO D U CTI O N . RELATI O NS O F PRO DU CTI O N
AND
RELATIONS
OF
C I R C U LATI O N .
F O R � IS OF T HE STATE A ND FOR�IS OF C O N S C I O U S NESS I N RE LATI O N TO RELATI O N S
O F P RODU C-
T I O N AND C I R C U LATI O N . LEGAL RELATI O NS . F A� I I LY RE LATI O N S .
Notabene in regard to points to be mentioned here and not to be forgotten : ( 1 ) War developed earlier than IJeace; the way in which certain economic relations such as wage labour, machinery etc. develop ear lier, owing to war and in the armies etc . , than in the interior of bourgeois society. The relation of productive force and relations of exchange also especially vivid in the army. ( 2 ) Relation of previous ideal historiography to the real. Namely of the so-called cultural histories, which are only histories of reli gions and of state. ( On that occasion something can also be said about the various kinds of previous historiography. The so-called objective. Subjective ( moral among others ) . The philosophical . ) ( 3 ) Secondary and tertiary matters; i n general, derivative, inher-
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245
ited, not original relations of production. Influence here of interna tional relations. ( 4) Accusations about the materialism of this conception. Rela tion to naturalistic materialism. ( 5 ) Dialectic of the concepts productive force (means of production) and relation of production, a dialectic whose bounda ries are to be determined, and which does not suspend the real dif fere nce. ( 6) The uneven development of material production relative to e.g. artistic development. In general, the concept of progress not to be conceived i n the usual abstractness. Modern art etc" This dispro portion not as important or so difficult to grasp as within practical social relations themselves. E .g. the relation of education. Relation of the United States to Europe. But the really difficult point to dis cuss h ere is how relations of production d evelop unevenly as legal relations . Thus e.g. the relation of Roman private law ( this less the case with criminal and public law ) to modern production. ( 7 ) This conception appears as necessary development. B ut legi timation of chance. How. ( Of freedom also, all!ong other things . ) ( Influence of means o f communication. World history has not always existed; h istory as wor ld history a result. ) ( 8 ) The point of departure obviously from the natural character istic; subjectively and objeetively. Tribes, races etc. ( 1 ) In the case of the arts, it is well known that certain periods of their flowering are out of all proportion to the general develop ment of society, hence also to the material foundation, the skeletal structure as it were, of its organization. For example, the Greeks compared to the moderns or also Shakespeare. It is even recognized that certain forms of art, e.g. the epic, can no longer be produced i n their world epoch-making, classical stature a s s o o n a s the production of art, as such, begins; that is, that certain significant forms within the realm of the arts are possible only at a n undeveloped stage of artistic development. If this is· the case with the relation between different kinds of art within the realm o f the arts, it is already less puzzling that i t is the case i n the relation of the entire realm to the general development of society. The difficulty consists only i n the general formulation of these contradictions. As soon as they ·have been specified, they are already clarified. Let us take e .g. the relation of Greek art and then of Shakespeare to the present time. It is well known that Greek mythology is not only the arsenal of Greek art but also its foundation. Is the view of nature and of social relations on which the Greek imagination and hence Greek [mythology] is based possible with self-acting mule spindles and railways and locomotives and electrical telegraphs? \Vhat chance h a s Vulcan against Roberts & Co., Jupiter against the
246
The Critique of Capitalism
lightning-rod and Hermes against the Credit Mobilier? All mythol ogy overcomes and dominates and shapes the forces of nature in the imagination and by the imagination; it therefore vanishes with the advent of real mastery over them. \Vhat becomes of Fama alongsid e Printing House Square? Greek art presupposes Greek mythology, i .e. nature and the social forms already reworked in an uncon sciously artistic way by the popular imagination. This is its material . Not any mythology whatever, i . e . not a n arbitrarily ch osen uncon sciously artistic reworking of nature ( here meaning everything objec tive, hence including society ) . Egyptian mythology could never have been the foundation or the womb of Greek art. But, in any case, a mythology. Hence, in no way a social development which excludes all mythological, all mythologizing relations to nature; which therefore demands of the artist an imagination not depend ent on mythology. From a nother side, is Achilles possible with powder and lead? Or the Iliad with the printing press, not to mention the printing machine? Do not the song and the saga and the muse necessarily come to an end with the printer's bar, hence do not the necessary conditions of epic poetry vanish? But the difficulty lies not in understanding that the Greek arts and epic are bound up with certain forms of social development. The difficulty is that they still afford u s artistic pleasure a n d th at in a certain respect they count as a norm and as an unattainable model. A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish . But does he not find j oy in the child 's naivete, and must he himself not strive to reproduce its truth at a higher stage? Does not the true character of each epoch come alive in the nature of its children? \Vh)' should not the historic childhood of h umanity, its most beau tiful unfolding, as a stage never to return, exercise an eternal charm? There are unruly children and precocious children. Many {)f the old peoples belong in this category. The Greeks were normal children. The charm of their art for us is not in contradiction to t he undeveloped stage of society on which it grew . [ It] is i ts result, ra ther, and is inextricably bound up, rather, with th e fact that the unripe social conditions under which it arose, a n d could alone arise, can never return.
B . Soc iety and the I ndividual Product and capital. Value and capital. Proudhon ( Nothing is more erroneous than the manner in which econo mists as well as socialists regard society in relation to economic con ditions. Proudhon, for example, replies to Bastiat by saying ( XVI,
The Grundrisse
247
29 ) : "For society, the differen ce between capital and product does n ot exis t . This differenc e is entirely subjectiv e, and related to in dividual s."! Thus he calls s ubjectiv e precisely what is social; and he calls society a subjectiv e abstract ion. The differenc e between product and capital is exactly this, that the product expresses , as capital, a particul ar relation belongin g to a historic form of society. This so-called contemp lation from the standpo int of society means nothing more than the overlook ing of the differences which express t he social relation ( relation of bourgeo is society ) . Society does not consist of individu als, but expresse s the sum of interrela tions, the relations within which these individu als stand. As if someone were to say : Seen from the perspecti ve of society, there are no slaves and no citizens : both are human beings. Rather, they are that outside society. To be a slave, to be a citizen, are social character istics, rela tions between h uman beings A and B. Human being A, as such , is not a slave. He is a slave in and through society. What Mr Proud - h on here says about capital and product means, for him, that from the viewpoin t of society there is no difference between capitalist s and workers; a difference which exists precisely only from the stand point of society. ) *
>I<
>I<
C . The Dynamics of Capitalism Surplus value. Surplus labour time.-Bastiat on wages. Value of labour. How determined?-Self-realization is self·preservation of capital. Capitalist may not live merely from his labour etc. Condi tions for the self-realization of capital. Surplus labour time etc.-To the extent that capital is productive (as creator of surplus labour etc .) , this only historic-transistory.-The free blacks in Jamaica. Wealth which has gained autonomy requires slave labour or wage labour (forced labour in both cases) . >I<
>I<
'"
What the worker exchanges with capital is his labour itself ( th e capacity o f disposing over it ) ; h e divests himself o f i t [entaussert sieJ . \Vhat he obtains as price is the value of this divestiture [EntaussenmgJ . He exchanges value-positing activity for a pre-de termined value, regardless of th e result of his activity. Now how is i t s value determined? By t h e objectified labour contained i n h i s commodity. This commodity exists in his vitality. I n order to main tain this from one day to the next-we are not yet dealing with the working class, i . e . the replacement for wear and tear so that it can maintain itself as a class, since the worker here confronts capital as a worker, i . e . as a presupposed perennial subject [Subjekt] , and 1 . Bastiat et Proudhon,
Gratuite d u credit
( Paris, 1 8 5 0 ) , p . 2 5 0.
248
The Critique of Capitalism
not yet as a mortal individual of the working species-he has to consume a certain quantity of food, to replace his used-up blood etc. He receives no more than an equivalent. Thus tomorrow, after the completed exchange-and only after he has formally completed the exchange does he execute it in the process of production-h is labouring capacity exists in the same mode as before : h e has received an exact equivalent, because the p rice which he has obtained leaves him in possession of the same exchange value he had before . Capital has paid him the amount of objectified labour contained in his vital forces. Capital has consumed it, and because it did not exist as a thing, but as the capacity of a living being, the worker can, owing to the specific nature of his commodity-the spe cific nature of the life process-resume the exchange anew. Since we are dealing here not with any particularly qualified labour but with labour in general, simple labour, we are here not yet concerned with the fact that there is more labour objectified in his immediate existence than is contained in his mere vitality-i .e. the labour time necessary to pay for the products necessary to maintain his vitality -namely the values he has consumed in order to produce a specific labouring capacity, a special skill-and the value of these shows itself in the costs necessary to produce a similar labouring skill . If one day's work were necessary in order to keep one worker alive for one day, then capital would not exist, because the working day would then exchange for its own product, so that capital could not realize itself and hence could not maintain itself as capital. The self-preservation of capital is its self-realization . If capital also had to work in order to live, then it would not maintain itself as capital but as labour. Property in raw materials and instruments of labour would be merely nominal; economically they would belong to the worker as much as to the capitalist, since they would create value for the capitalist only in so far as he h imself were a worker. He would relate to them therefore not as capital, but as simple material and means of labour, like the worker himself does in the p roduction process. If, however, only half a working day is necessary i n order to keep one worker alive one whole day, then the surplus value of the product is self-evident, because the capitalist h as paid the price of only half a working day but has obtained a whole day objectified in the product; thus has exchanged nothing for the second half of the work day. The only thing which can make him into a capital ist is not exchange, but rather a process through which he obtains objec tified labour time, i . e. value, without exchange. Half the working day costs capital nothing; it thus obtains a value for which it has given no equivalent. And the multiplication of values can take place only i f a value in excess of the equivalent has been obtained, hence created.
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249
Surplus val ue in general is value in excess of the equivalent. The equivalent, by definition, is only the identity of value with itself . Hence surplus value can never sprout out o f the equivalent; nor can it do so originally out of circulation; it has to arise from the produc tion process of capital itself. The matter can also be expressed in this way : if the worker needs only half a working day in order to live a whole day, then, in order to keep alive as a worker, he needs to work only half a day. The second h alf of the labour day is forced labour; surplus-labour. What appears as surplus value on capital's s ide appears identically on the worker's side as surplus labour in excess of his requirements as worker, h ence i n excess of his immedi a te requirements for keeping himself alive. The great historic qual ity of capital is to create this surplus labour, superfluous labour from the standpoint of mere use value, mere subsistence; and its historic destiny [Bestimmung] is fulfilled as soon as, on one side, there has been such a development of needs that surplus labour above and beyond necessity has itself become a general need arising out of individual needs themselves-and, on the other side, when the severe discipline of capital, acting on succeeding generations [Geschlechter] , has developed general industriousness as the gen eral property of the new species [Geschlecht] -and, finally, when the development of the productive powers of labour, which capital incessantly whips onward with its unlimited mania for wealth, and of the sole conditions in which this mania can be realized, have flourished to the stage where the possession and preservation of gen eral wealth require a lesser labour time of society as a whole, and where the labouring society relates scientifically to the process of its progressive reproduction, its reproduction in a constantly greater abundance; hence where labour in which a human being does what a thing could do has ceased. Accordingly, capital and l abour relate to each other here like money and commodity; the former is the general form of wealth, the other only the substance destined for immediate consumption. Capital's ceaseless striving towards the general form of wealth drives labour beyond the limits of its natural paltriness [Naturbediirftigkeit] , and thus creates the material ele ments for the development of the rich individuality which is as aII sided in its production as in its consumption, and whose labour also therefore appears no longer as labour, but as the full developmen t of activity itself, in which natural necessity in its direct form h as disappeared; because a his torically created need has taken the place of the natural one. This is why capital is productive; i.e. an essential relation for the development of the social productive forces. It ceases to exist as such only where the development of these produc tive forces themselves enC0unters its barrier in capital itself. The Times of November 1 8 5 7 contains an utterly delightful cry
250
The Critique of Capitalism
of outrage on the part of a \Vest-Indian plantation owner. This advocate analyses with great moral indignation-as a plea for the re-introduction
of Negro
slave ry-h ow
the
Quashees
( th e
free
blacks of Jamaica ) content themselves with producing only what is strictly necessary for their own consumption, and, alongside this " u s e value, " regard loafing ( i ndulgence a n d i dleness ) a s the real luxury good; how they do not care a damn fo r the sugar and the fixed capital i n vested in the plantations, but
rather observe the
planters' impending bankruptcy with a n ironic grin of malicious pleasure, a n d even exploit their acquired Christianity as a n embel l i s h m e n t for this mood of malicious glee and indolenc e . 2 They have ceased to be slaves, b u t not i n order to become wage labourers, but, instead, self-sustaining peasants working f o r th e i r own consumpti o n . A s f a r as they a r e concerned, capital d o e s not exist a s capital, because autonomous wealth as such can exist only e i th e r o n the basis o f
direct forced
labour.
Wealth confronts direct forced labour not as capital, but
rather as
labour, slavery, o r
indirect forced
labour,
relation of domination [Herrschaftsverhiiltnis] ;
wage
th us, the
relation of domination is the only thing which is reproduced on this basis, for w h i c h wealth itself has value only as gratification, n o t a s w e a l t h itself, a n d which can therefore n e v e r create
triousness.
general indus
( \Ve shall return to this relation of slavery and wage
labour. )
D . The Develo p ment of Exchan g e and of Ca p ital Original accumulation of capital. (The real accumulation) .-Once developed historically, capital itself creates the conditions of its existence (not as conditions for its arising, but as results of its being ) .- ( Performance of personal services, as opposed to wage labour.)-Inversion of the law of appropriation. Real alien relation [Fremdheit] of the worker to his product. Division of labour. Machinery etc. O n c e production founded on capital is p resupposed-money has become transformed into capital actually only at the
production
new production of surplus capital itself
end of the first
p rocess, which resulted in its reproduction and i n the
posited,
I;
surplus capital
I,
however, is
realized as surplus capital, only when i t has p roduced
s u rplus capital
II,
i .e . as soon as those p resuppositions o f money,
while i t i s in t h e process of passing over into capital, which still lie o u tside the movement of
real capital
2 . T h e T i m e s . London, Satu rday, 2 1 November 1 8 5 7 , N o . 2 2 , 8 4 4 , p . 9 . "N egroes and the Slave Tralie. T o the Editor o f The Times. By Expertus."
have vani s hed , and when capi-
Marx's English in this sentence has been changed to conform to modern usage.
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251
tal ha s therefore itself posited, a n d posited i n accordance with its immanent essence, the conditions which form its point of departure in production- [ then] the condition that the capitalist, in order to posit himself as capital, must bring values into circulation which he created with his own labour-or by some other means, excepting only already available, previous wage labou r-belongs among the antediluvian conditions of capital, belongs to its historic presupposi tions, which, precisely as such historic presuppositions, are past and gone, and hence belong to the history of its formation, but i n no way to its contemporary history, i .e. not to the real system of the mode of production ruled by it. \Vhile e .g. the flight of serfs to the cities is one of the historic conditions and presuppositions of urban ism, it is not a condition, not a moment of the reality of developed cities, but belongs rather to their past presuppositions, to the pre suppositions of their becoming which are suspended in their being. The conditions and presuppositions of the becoming, of the arising, of capital presuppose precisely that it is not yet in being but merely in becoming; they therefore disappear as real capital a rises, capital which itself, on the basis of its own reality, posits the conditions for its realization. Thus e.g. while the process in which money or value for-itself originally becomes capital presupposes on the part of the capitalist an accumulation-perhaps by means of savings garnered from products and values created by his own labour etc ., which he has undertaken as a not-capitalist, i .e. while the presuppositions under which money becomes capital appear as given, external pre suppositions for the arising of capital- [ nevertheless,] as soon as capital has become capital as such , it creates its own presupposi tions, i . e . the possession of the real conditions of the creation of new values without exchange-by means of its own p roduction process. These p resuppositions, which originally appeared as condi tions of its becoming-and hence could not spring from its action as capital-now appear as results of its own realization, reality, as posited by it-not as conditions of its arising, but as results of its presence. It no longer proceeds from presuppositions in order to become, but rather it is itself presupposed, and proceeds from itself to create the conditions of its maintenance and growth . Therefore, the conditions which preceded the creatiOn of surplus capital I, or which express the becoming of capital, do not fall into the sphere of that mode of production for which capital serves as the presuppo sition; as the historic preludes of its becoming, they lie behind it, just as the p rocesses by means of which the earth made the transi tion from a liquid sea of fire and vapour to its present form now lie beyond its life as finished earth . That is, individual capitals can con tinue to arise e .g. by means of hoarding. But the hoard is trans formed into capital only by means of the exploitation of labour.
2 52
The Critique of Capitalism
The bourgeois economists who regard capital as an eternal and natural ( not historical ) form of production then attempt at the same time to legitimize it again by formulating the conditions of its becoming as the conditions of its contemporary realization; i . e . pre senting the moments in which the capitalist still appropriates as not-capitalist-because he is still becoming-as the very conditions in which he appropriates as capitalist. These attempts at apologetics demonstrate a guilty conscience, as well as the inability to bring the mode of appropriation of capital as capital into harmony with the general laws of property proclaimed by capitalist society itself. On the other side, much more important for us is that our method indi cates th e points where historical investigation must enter in, or where bourgeois economy as a merely h istorical form of the produc tion process points beyond itself to earlier historical modes of pro duction. In order to develop the laws of bourgeois economy, there fore, it is not necessary to write the real history of the relations of production. But the correct observation and deduction of these laws, as having themselves becomeS in history, always leads to primary equations-like the empirical numbers e.g. in natural science which point towards a past lying behind this system. These indica tions [AndeutungJ , together with a correct grasp of the present, then also offer the key to the understanding of the past-a work in its own right which, it is to be hoped, we shall be able to undertake as welJ.4 This correct view likewise leads to the same time to the points at which the suspension of the present form of production relations gives signs of its becoming-foreshadowings of the future. J us t as, on one side the pre bourgeois phases appear as merely histor ical, i.e. suspended presuppositions, so do the contemporary condi tions of production likewise appear as engaged in suspending them selves and hence i n positing the historic presuppositions for a new state of society. ,'.. - Now, if we initially examine the relation such as it has become, value h aving become capital, and living labour confronting it as mere use value, so that living labour appears as a mere means to realize objectified, dead labour, to penetrate it with an animating soul while losing its own soul to it-and having p roduced, as the ,end-product, alien wealth on one side and [, on the other,] the · p enury which is living labour capacity's sole possession-then the matter is simply this, that the process itself, i n and by itself, posits 3 . Having themselves become = having themselves undergone the process of b e c o m i n g , as indicated above. 4. On 2 2 February 1 8 5 8 , Marx wrote to Lassalle that he w a s planning three work s : ( 1 ) a critique of the economic categories or the system o f bourgeois economy critically presented, ( 2 ) a c r i -
t i q l i e and history o f political economy and socialism, a n d ( 3 ) a short histor ical sketch of the development of eco nomic relations o r categories (Mar:/: Engels Selected Correspondence, Mos cow, n .d . , p. 1 2 5 ) . Marx referred here to the third work, which he never pro· d uced i n a completed form.
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2 53
the real objective conditions of living labour ( namely, material in which to realize itself, instrument with which to realize itself, and necessaries with which to stoke the flame of living labour capacity, to protect it from being extinguished, to supply its vital processes with the n ecessary fuels ) and posits them as alien, independent existences-or as the mode of existence of an alien person, as self sufficient values for-themselves, and h ence as values which form wealth alien to an isolated and subj ective labour capacity, wealth of and for the capitalist. The objective conditions of living labour appear as separated, independent [verselbstandigte] values oppo site living labour capacity as subj ective being, which therefore appears to them only as a value of another 'dnd ( not as value, but different from them, as use value ) . Once this separation is given, the production process can only produce it anew, reproduce it, and reproduce i t on an expanded scale. How i t does this, we have seen. The objective conditions of living labour capacity are presupposed as having an existence independent of it, as the objectivity. of a sub ject distinct from living labour capacity and standing independently over against it; the reproduction and realization [Verwertung] , i.e. the expansion of these ob;ective conditions, i.s therefore at the same time their own reproduction and new production as the wealth of an alien subject indifferently and independently standing over against labour capacity. What is reproduced and produced · anew [neuproduziert] is not only the presence of these objective condi tions of living labour, but also their presence as independent values; i.e. values belonging to an alien sub;ect, confronting this living labour capacity. The objective conditions of labour attain a subjective existence vis-a-vis living labour capacity--capital turns into cap italist; on the other side, the merely subjective presence of the labour capacity confronted by its own conditions gives it a merely indifferent, objective form as against them-it is merely a value of a particular use value alongside the conditions of its own realization [Verwertung] as values of another use value. I nstead of their being realized [realisiert] in the production process as the condi� tions of its realization [Verwirklichung] , what happens is quite the opposite : it comes out of the process as mere condition for their realization [Verwertung] and preservation as values for-themselves opposite living labour capacity. The material on which it works is alien material; the instrument is likewise an alien instrument; its labour appears as a mere accessory to their substance and hence objectifies itself in things not belonging to it. I n deed, living labour itself appears as alien vis-d.-vis living labour capacity, whose labour it is, whose own l ife's expression [Lebensausserung] i t is, for it has been surrendered to capital in exchange for objectified labour, for the product of labour itself. Labour capacity relates to its labour as
_
254
The Critique of Capitalism
to a n alien, and if capital were willing to pay it without making i t labour i t would enter the bargain with pleasure. Thus labour capaci. ty's own labour is as alien to it-and it really is, as regards its direc tion etc.-as are material and instrument. \Vhich is why the pro d uct then appears to it as a combination of alien material, alie n instrument and alien labour-as alien property, and why, after pro duction, it has become poorer by the life forces expended, but oth erwise begins the drudgery anew, existing as a mere subjective labour capacity separated from the conditions of its life. The recog nition [Erkennung] of the products as its own, and the j udgement that its separation from the conditions of its realization is improper -forcibly imposed-is an enormous [advance in] , awareness [Bewusstsein] , itself the product of the mode of p roduction rest ing on capital, and as much the knell to its doom as, with the slave's awareness that he cannot be the property of another, with his consciousness of himself as a person, the existence of slavery becomes a merely artificial, vegetative existence, and ceases to be able to prevail as the basis of production. However, if we consider the original relation, before the entry of money into the self-realization process, then variolls conditions appear which have to have arisen, or been given h istorically, for money to become capital and labour to become capital-positing, capital-creating labour, wage labour. ( \Vage labour, h ere, in the strict economic sense in which we use it here, and no other-and we will later have to distinguish it from other forms of labour for day-wages etc.-is capital-positing, capital-producing labour, i.e. living labour which produces both the objective conditions of its realization as an activity, as well as the objective moments of its being as labour capacity, and produces them as alien powers oppo site itself, as values for-themselves, independent of it. ) The essential conditions a re themselves posited in the relation as it appears origi nally : ( 1 ) on the one side the presence of living labour capacity as a merely subjective existence, separated from the conditions of living labour as well as from the means of existence, the necessary goods, the means of self-preservation of living labour capacity; the living possibility of labour, on the one side, in this complete abstraction; ( 2 ) the value, or objectified labou r , found on the other side, must be an accumulation of use values suffic i ently large to fur nish the objective conditions not only for the production of the products or values required to reproduce or maintain living labour capacity, but also for the absorption of surplus labour-to supply the objective material for the latter; ( 3 ) a free exchange relation money circulation-between both sides; between the extremes a relation founded on exchange values-not on the master-servant relation-i .e., hence, production which does not directly furnish the
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p roducer with h i s necessaries, but which is mediated through exchange, and which cannot therefore usurp alien labour directly, but must buy it, exchange it, from th e worker himself; finally ( 4 ) one side-the side representing the objective conditions o f labour in the form of independent values for-themselves-must present itself as value, and must regard the positing of value, sel f-realization, money-making, as the ultimate purpose-not direct consumption of the creation of use value. So long as both sides exchange their laboour with one another in the form of obiectified labour, the relation is impossible; it is like wise impossible if living labour capacity itself appears · as the prop erty of the other side, hence as not engaged in exchange. ( Th e fact that slavery is possible at individual points within the bourgeois system of production does not contradict this . However, slavery is then possible there only because it does not exist at other points; and appears as an anomaly opposite the bourgeois system itself. ) The conditions under which the relation appears at the origin, or which appear as the historic presuppositions of its becoming, reveal at first glance a two-sided character-on one side, dissolution of lower forms of living labour; on the other, dissolution of happier forms of the same. The first p resupposition, to begin with, is that the relation of slavery or serfdom has been suspended. Living labour capacity belongs to itself, and has disposition over the expenditure of its forces, through exchange. Both sides confront each other as persons. Formally, their relation has the equality and freedom of exchange as such . As far as concerns the legal relation, the fact that this form is a mere semblance, and a deceptive semblance, appears as an external matter. \Vhat the free worker sells is always nothing more than a specific, particular measure of force-expenditure [Kraftiiusserung] ; labour capacity as a totality is greater than every particular expenditure . He sells the particular expenditure of force to a particular capitalist, whom he confronts as an independent individual. It is clear that this is not h is relation to the existence of capital as capital, i .e. to the capitalist class. Nevertheless, in Jhis way everything touching on the individual, real person leaves him a wide field of choice, of arbitrary will, and hence of formal f reedom . In the slave relation, he belongs to the individual, particular owner, and is his labouring machine. As a totality of force-expenditure, as labour capacity, he is a thing [Sache] belonging to another, and h ence does not relate as subject to his particular expenditure of force, nor to the act of living labour. In the serf relation he appears as a moment of property in land itself, is an appendage of the soil, exactly like draught-cattle. In the slave relation the worker is noth ing but a living labour-machine, which therefore has a value for
256
The Critique of Capitalism
others, or rather is a value. The totality of the free worker's labour capacity appears to him as his property, as one of h is moments, over which he, as subject, exercises domination, and which he maintains by expending it. This is to be developed later under wage labour. The exchange of objectified labour for living labour does not yet constitute either capital on one side or wage labour on the other. The entire class of so-called services from the bootblack up to the king falls into this category. Likewise the free day-labourer, whom we encounter sporadically in all places where either the oriental community [Cemeinwesen] or the western commune [Ce meinde] consisting of free landowners dissolves into individual ele ments-as a consequence of increase of population, release of pris oners of war, accidents by which the individual is impoverished and loses the objective conditions of his self-sustaining labour, owing to division of labour etc. If A exchanges a value or money, i.e. objecti fied labour, in order to obtain a service from B, i . e . living labour, then this can belong : ( 1 ) within the relation of simple circulation. Both in fact exchange only use values with one another; one exchanges necessar ies, the other labour, a service which the other wants to consume, either directly-personal service-or he furnishes h im the material etc. from which, with his labour, with the objectification of his labour, he makes a use value, a use value designed for A's consump tion. For example, when the peasant takes a wandering tailor, of the kind that existed i n times past, into his house, and gives him the material to make cloth e s with . Or if I give money to a doctor to patch up my health . What is important i n these cases is the service which both do for one another. Do ut facias here appears on quite the same level as facio ut des, or do ut des.5 The man who takes the cloth I supplied to him and makes me an article of clothing out of it gives me a use value. But instead of giving it directly in objec tive form, h e gives i t in the form of activity. I give him a completed use value; he completes another for me. The difference between pre vious, objectified labour and living, present labour here appears as a merely formal difference between the different tenses of labour, at one time in the perfect and at another in the present. It appears i n fact a s a merely formal difference, a difference mediated by division of labour and by exchange, whether B himself produces the neces saries on which he has to subsist, or whether he obtains them from A and, instead of producing the necessaries himself, produces an article of clothing, in exchange for which he obtains them from A. I n both cases he can take possession of the use value possessed by A only by giving him an equivalent for it; which, in the last analysis, S. Do
ut
may d o ;
facias : I g i v e y o u that you facio ut des : I d o that you
may give ; do ut des : I give that you may give ( Roman law) .
The Grundrisse
2 57
always resolves itself into his oWn living labour, regardless of the objective form i t may adopt, whether before the exchange is con cluded, or as a consequence of it. Now, the article of clothing not only contains a specific, form-giving la bour-a specific form of use fulness imparted to the cloth by the movement of labour-but i t contains also a certain quantity o f labour-hence n o t only use value, but value generally, value as s uch . But this value does not exist for A, since he consumes the article, and is not a clothesdealer. He has therefore bought the labour not as value-positing labour, but as an activity which creates utility, use value. In the case of personal services, this use value is consumed as such without making the transition from the form of movement [Bewegung] into the form of the object [Sache] . If, as is frequentl y the case in simple rela tions, the performer of the service does not obtain money, but direct use values themselves, then it no longer even seems as if value were being dealt in on one or the other side; merely use values . But even given that A pays money for the service, this is not a transformation of his money into capital, but rather the positing of his money as mere medium of circulation, in order to obtain an object for consumption, a specific use value. This act is for that reason not an act which produces wealth, but the opposite, one which consumes wealth . The point for A is not the objectification in the cloth of labour as such, of a certain amount of labour time, hence value, but rather the satisfaction o f a certain need . Here A sees his money not realized but devalued in its transposition from the form of value into that of use value. Labour is here exchanged not as use value for value, but as itself a particular use value, as value for use. The more frequently A repeats the exchange, the poorer does h e become. This exchange is not an act of wealth-get ting for him, not an a c t of value creation, but of devaluation of the values he has in hand, in his possession . The money which A here exchanges for living labour-service i n kind, or service objectified i n a thing-is not capital b u t revenue, money as a medium o f circula tion in order to obtain use value, money in which the form of value is posited as merely vanishing, not money which will preserve and realize itself as such through the acquisition of labour. Exchange o f money as revenue, a s a mere medium of circulation, for living labour, can never posit money as capital, nor, therefore, labour as wage labour i n the economic sense. A lengthy disquisition is n o t required to show that to consume ( spend ) money is not the same as to produce money. I n situations i n which the greatest part of sur plus labour appears as agricultural labour, and where the owner of the land therefore appears as owner both of surplus labour and of the surplus product, i t is the revenue of the owner of the land which forms the labour fund for the free worker, for the worker in
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The Critique of Capitalism
manufactures ( h ere, hand crafts ) as opposed to the agricultural labourers. The exchange with them') is a form of the consumption of the owner of the land-he divides anoth er part of his revenue directly-for personal services, often only the illusion of services, with a heap of retainers. In Asiatic societies, where the monarch appears as the exclusive proprietor of the agricultural surplus prod uct, whole cities arise, which are at bottom nothing more than wan dering encampments, from the exchange of his revenue with the "free hands," as Steuart calls them .7 There is nothing of wage la bour in this relation, but it can stand in opposition to slavery and serfdom, though need not do so, fo r it always repeats itself under various forms of the overall organization of labour. To the extent tha t money mediates this exchange the determination of p rices will become important on both sides, but it will do so for A only in so far as he does not want to pay too much for the use value of the la bour; not in so far as he is concerned with its value. The essence of the relation remains unchanged even if this price, which begins as conventional and traditional, is thereafter increasingly deteJ; mined economically, first by the relation of demand and supply, finally by the production costs a t which the vendors themselves of these living services can be produced; noth ing is essentially changed thereby, because the determination of prices remains a merely formal moment for the exchange of mere use values, as before . This determination itself, however, is created by oth e r relations, by the general laws and the self-determination of the ruling mode of pro duction, acting, as it were, behind the back of this particular act of exchange. One of the forms in which this kind of pay [Besoldung] first appears in the old communities is where an army is main tained . The pay [Sold] of th e common soldier is also reduced to a minimum-determined purely by the production costs necessary to procure him. But he exchanges the performance of his services not for capital, but for the revenue of the state. I n the bourgeois society itself, all exchange of personal services for revenue-including labour for personal consumption, cooking, sewing etc., garden work etc., up to and incl uding all of the unpro ductive classes, civil servants, physicians, lawyers, scholars etc.-be l ongs under this rubric, within this category. All menial servants etc. By means of their services-often coerced-all these workers, from the least to the h ighest, obtain for themselves a share of the surplus product, of the capitalist's revenue. But it does not occur to anyone to think that by means of the exchange of his revenue for such serv ices, i . e . through private consumption, the capitalist posits h imself as capitalist . Rather, he thereby spends the fruits of his capital. It 6 . That i s . with . the free workers m a n u factures (hand crafts ) .
in
7. Steuart.
An Inquiry. Vol. 1 .
p . 40.
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2 59
does not change the nature of the relation that the proportions in which revenue is exchanged for this kind of living labour are them selv e s determined by th e general laws of production. As we have already mentioned i n the section on money,S i t is here rather the performer of the service who actually posits value; who transposes a use value-a certain kind of labour, service etc. in to value, money . Hence in the l\ l iddle Ages, those who are ori ented towards the p rod uction and accumulation of money proceed partly not from the side of the consuming landed nobility, but quite th e opposite, from the side of living labour; they accumulate and thus become capitalists, OVVclfLH, for a later period . The emanci pated serf becomes, in part, the capitalist. It thus does not depend on the general relation, but rather on the natural, particular quality of the service performed, whether the recipient of payment receives it as day-wages, or as an honorarium, or as a sinecure-and whether he appears as superior or inferior in rank io the person paying for the service. However, with the presup position of capital as the dominant power, all these relations become more or less dishonoured. But this does not belong h ere yet -this de mystification [Entgotterung] of personal services, regard less of the lofty character with which tradition may have poetically endowed them. It is not, then, simply the exchange of objectified labour for living labour-which appear, from this standpoint, as two different aspects, as use values in different forms, the one objective, the other subjective-which constitutes capital and h ence wage labour, but rather, the exchange of objectified labour as value, as self-sufficient value, for living labour as its use value, as use value not for a spe cific, particular use or consumption, but as use value for value . In the exchange of money for labour or service, with the aim of direct consumption, a real exchange always takes place; the fact that amounts of labour a re exchanged on both sides is of merely formal interest for measuring the particular forms of the utility of labour by comparing them with each other. This concerns only the form of th e exchange; but does not form its content. I n the exchange of capital for labour, value is not a measure for the exchange of two use values, but is rather the content of the exchange itsel f. ( z ) I n periods of the dissolution of pre-bourgeois relations, there sporadically occur free workers whose services are bought for pur poses not of consumption, but of production; but, firstly, even if on a large scale, for the production only of direct use values, not of values; and secondly, i f a nobleman e .g. brings the free worker together with his serfs, even if he re-sells a part of the worker's 8 . Marx d i d not in fact mention this i n the Chapter o n Money b u t rather
in the
260
The Critique of Capitalism
product, and the free worker thus creates value for h im, then this exchange takes place only for the superfluous [product] and only for the sake of superfluity, for luxury consumption; is thus at bottom only a veiled purchase of alien labour for immediate con sumption or as use value. Incidentally, wherever these free workers increase in number, and where this relation grows, there the old mode of production-commune, patriarchal, feudal etc.-is in the process of dissolution, and the elements of real wage labour are in preparation. But these free servants [Knechte] can also emerge, as e.g. in Poland etc., and vanish again, without a change in the mode of production taking place. In order to express the relations into which capital and wage labour enter as property relations or laws, we need do no more than express the conduct of both sides in the realization process as an appropriation process. For example, the fact that surplus labour is posited as surplus value of capital means that the worker does not appropriate the product of his own labour; that it appears to him as alien property; inversely, that alien labour appears as the property of capital. This second law of bourgeois property, the inversion of the first-which, through laws of inheritance etc., attains an existence independent of the accidental transitoriness of individual capitalists -becomes just as established in law as the first. The first is the identity of labour with property; the second, labour as negated prop erty, or property as negation of the alien quality of alien labour. In fact, in the production process of capital, as will be seen more closely in its further development, labour is a totality-a combina tion of labours-whose individual component parts are alien to Qne another, so that the overall process as a totality is not the work of the individual worker, and is furthermore the work of the different workers together only to the extent that they are [forcibly] com bined, and do not [voluntarily] enter into combination with one a nother. The combination of this labour appears j ust as subservient to and led by an alien will and an alien intelligence-having its ani� mating unity elsewhere-as its material unity appears subordinate to the objective unity of the machinery, of fixed capital, which, as animated monster, objectifies the scientific idea, and is in fact the coordinator, does not in any way relate to the individual worker as his instrument; but rather he himself exists as an animated individ ual punctuation mark, as its living isolated accessory. Thus, com bined labour is combination in-itselt in a double way; not combina tion as a mutual relation among the individuals working together, nor as their predominance either over their particular or individual function or over the instrument of labour. Hence, just as the worker relates to the product of his labour as an alien thing, so does he relate to the combination of labour as an alien combination, as well
The Grundrisse
261
as to his own labour as an expression of his life, which, although it belongs to him, is alien to him and coerced from him, and which A. Smith etc. therefore conceives as a burden, sacrifice etc.9 Labour itself, like its product, is negated as the labour of the particular, iso lated worker. This isolated labour, negated, is now indeed com munal or combined labour, posited. The communal or combined labour posited in this way-as activity and in the passive, objective form-is however at the same time posited as an other towards the really existing individual labour-as an alien objectivity ( alien prop erty ) as well as an alien subjectivity (of capital ) . Capital thus repre sents both labour and its product as negated individualized labour and hence as the negated property of the individualized worker. Capital therefore is the existence of social labour-the combination of labour as subject as well as object-but this existence as itself existing independently opposite its real moments-hence itself a particular existence apart from them . For its part, capital therefore appears as the predominant subject and owner of alien labour, and its relation is itself as complete a contradiction as is that of wage labour.) *
*
*
E. Pre-Capitalist Property and Production The original unity between a particular form of community ( clan ) and the corresponding property in nature, or relation to the objective conditions of production as a natural being, as an objec tive being of the individual mediated by the commune-this unity, which appears in one respect as the particular form of property has its living reality in a specific mode of production itself, a mode which appears both as a relation between the individuals, and as their specific active relation to inorganic nature, a specific mode of working ( which is always family labour, often communal labour ) . The community itself appears as the first great force of production; particular kinds of production conditions ( e.g. stock-breeding, agri culture ) , develop particular modes of production and particular forces of production, subjective, appearing as qualities of individu als, as well as objective [onesJ. In the last anaysis, their community, as well as the property based on it, resolves itself into a specific stage in the development of the productive forces of working subjects-to which correspond their specific relations amongst one another and towards nature. Until a certain point, reproduction . Then turns into dissolution. Property, then, originally means-in its Asiatic, Slavonic, ancient 9.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations,
Vol.
I,
pp.
104-5.
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The Critique of Capitalism
classical, Germanic form-the relation of the working ( produC ing or self-reproducing ) subject to the conditions of his production or reproduction as his own. It will therefore have different forms depending on the conditions of this production. Production itself aims at the reproduction of the producer within and together with these, his objective conditions of existence. This relation as proprie tor-not as a result but as a presupposition of labour, i.e. of produc tion-presupposes the individual defined as a member of a clan or community ( whose property the individual himself is,· up to a cer tain point ) . Slavery, bondage etc., where the worker himself appears among the natural conditions of production for a third individual or community ( this is not the case e.g. with the general slavery of the Orient, only from the European point of view ) -i.e. property no longer the relation of the working individual to the objective condi tions of labour-is always secondary, derived, never original, although [it is] a necessary and logical result of property founded on the community and labour in the community. It is of course very simple to imagine that some powerful, physically dominant individual, after first having caught the animal, then catches humans in order to have them catch animals; in a word, uses human beings as another naturally occurring condition for h is reproduction ( whereby his own labour reduces itself to ruling ) like any other natural creature. But such a notion is stupid-correct as it may be from the standpoint of some particular given clan or com mune-because it proceeds from the development of isolated indi viduals. But human beings become individuals only through the process of history. He appears originally as a species-being [Gattungswesen], clan being, herd animal although in no way whatever as a �WOJl 1I"oALTtK6J1 1 in the political sense. Exchange itself is a chief means of this individuation [Verein:zelung]. It makes the herd-like existence superfluous and dissolves it. Soon th e matter [has] turned in such a way that as an individual he relates himself only to himself, while the means with which he posits h imself as individuals h ave become the making of his generality and common ness. In this community, the objective being of the individual as proprietor, say proprietor of land, is presupposed, and presupposed moreover under certain conditions which chain him to the commu nity, or rather form a link in his chain. In bourgeois society, the worker e.g. stands there purely without objectivity, subjectively; but the thing which stands opposite him has now become the true com munity [Gemeinwesen], which he tries to make a meal of, and which makes a meal of him. All forms ( more or less naturally arisen, spontaneous, all at the same time however results of a historic process ) in which the com munity presuppos es its subjects in a specific objective unity with -
1.
Political animal;
literally.
cit y-dweller.
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their conditions of production, or in which a specific subjective mode of being presupposes the comm u n i ties themselves as condi tions of productio n , necessarily correspond to a de v elopment of the forces of p ro duc tion which is only li m i ted , and indeed limited in principle . The de v elopment of th e forces of production dissolves these forms, and the i r dissolution is itself a deve l opment of the human productive forces. Labour begins with a certain foundation - na t ura lly arisen, spontaneous, at first-then historic pres upposi tion. Then, however, this foundation or pres uppo s it i on is itself sus pended, or posited as a vanishing presupposition wh ich has become too confining for the unfolding of th e progress i ng human pack . In so far as classical landed property reappears in modern smaIl parcel landownership, it itself belongs to political economy and we shall come to it in the section on la nd e d p roperty . (All this is to be returned to at greater depth and length.) What we are here concerned with is this: the relation of labour to capita l, or to the objective conditions of labour as capital, presup poses a process of history which dissolves the various forms in which the worker is a propr ietor , or in which the p r oprieto r works. Thus above all (1) Dissolution of the relation to the earth-land and soil -as natural condition of production-to which he rel ates as to his own inorganic being; the wor ksho p of his forces, and the domain of his will. All forms in which this property appears presuppose a com munity, w hose members, although there may be formal distinctions between them, are, as members of it, proprietors. The ori g inal form of this property is therefore itself direct common property (oriental form, modified in the Slavonic; developed to the poin t of antithesis, but sti ll as the secret, if a ntithetical, foundation in classical and Germanic property) . (2) Dissolution of the relations in which he a ppea r s as proprietor of t h e instrument. Just as the above form of landed property presupposes a real community, so does this property of the worker in the instrument presuppose a particular form of the development of manufactures, namely craft, artisan work; bound up with it, the guild, corporation system etc. ( The manufac ture system of the ancient Orient can be examined under (1) already. ) Here labour itself still half artistic, half end-in-itself etc. Mastery. Capi talist h i mself stil l ma ster - j ourneyman. Attainment of par t icular skill in the work also secures possession of instrument etc. etc . I nheritabilitv then to a certain extent of the mode of work together with th� organization of work and the in s trument of work. Medieval cities. Labour still as his own; definite self-sufficient devel opment of one-sided abilities etc. (3) I ncl uded in both is the fact that he has the me a ns of cons u mptio n in h is po ss ess ion before pro duction , which a re necessary for him to live as pro ducer-i . e . durin g prod u ctio n, before its co mpletion . As proprietor of land he appears as directly provided with the necessar y consumption fund. As
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master in a craft he has inherited it, earned it, saved it up, and as a young he is first an apprentice, where he does not appear as an actual independent worker at all, but shares the master's fare in a patriarchal way. As journeyman (a genuine one) there is a certain communality in the consumption fund possessed by the master. While it is not the journeyman's property either, still, through the laws of the guild, tradition etc., at least co-possession etc. (To be gone into further.) (4) Dissolution likewise at the same time of the relations in which the workers themselves, the living labour capacities themselves, still belong directly among the ob jective conditions of production, and are appropriated as such-i .e. are slaves or serfs . For capital, the worker is not a condition. of production, only work is . If it can make machines do i t, or even water, air, so much the better. And it does not appropriate the worker, but his labour-not directly, but mediated through exchange. These are, now, on one side, historic presuppositions needed before the worker can be found as a free worker, as objectless, purely subjective labour capacity confronting the objective con ditions of production as his not-property, as alien property, as value for-itself, as capital. B ut the question arises, on the other side, which conditions are required so that he finds himself up against a capital? (The formula of capital, where living labour relates to the raw material as well as to the instrument and to the means of s ub sistence required during labour, as negatives, as not-property, includes, first of all, not-land-ownership, or, the negation of the situation in which the working individual relates to land and soil, to the earth, as his own, i.e. in which he works, produces, as proprietor of the land and soil. In the best case he relates not only as worker to the land and soil, but also as proprietor of the land and soil to himself as working subject. Ownership of land· and soil potentially also includes ownership of the raw material, as well as of the primordial instrument, the earth itself, and of its spontaneous fruits. Posited in the most original form, it means relating to the earth as proprietor, and finding raw material and instrument on hand, as well as the n ecessaries of life created not by labour but by the earth itself. Once this relation is reproduced, secondary instruments and fruits of the earth created through labour itself appear as included with landed property in its primitive forms . This historic situation is thus first of all negated as a full property relation, in the worker's relation to the condi tions of labour as capital. This is historic state No. I, which is negated in this relation or presupposed as historically dissolved. Secondly, however, where there is ownership of the instrument on the part of the worker, i.e. the worker relates to the instru-
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m ent as his own, where the worker works as owner of the instru ment ( which at the same time presupposes the subsumption of the i nstrument under his individual work, i.e. a particular, limited d evelopmental stage of the productive force of labour), where this form of the worker (/s owner or of the working owner is already posited as an independent form beside and apart from landed property the artisan-like and urban development of labour not, as in the first case, as accidental to landed property and subsumed under it-hence where the raw material and the neces s aries of life are also mediated as the craftsman's property, mediated through his craft work, through his property in the instrument there a second historical stage is already presupposed beside and apart from the first, which must itself already appear significantly modified, through the achievement of independence by this second sort of property or by working owners. Since the instru ment itself is already the product of labour, thus the element which constitutes property already exists as posited by labour, the community can n o longer appear here in a naturally arisen, spontaneous form as in the first case-the community on which this form of property founded-but rather as itself already a produced, made, derived and secondary community, produced by the worker himself. It is clear that wherever ownership of the instrument is the relation to the conditions of production as property, there, in the real labour process, the instrument appears only as a means of individual labour; the art of really appro priating the instrument, of handling it as an instrument of labour, appears as the worker's particular skill, which posits him as the owner of the instrument. In short, the essential character of the guild-corporation system, of craft work as its subject, consti tuted by owners-can be resolved into the relation to the in strument of production-..-:.t he instrument of labour as property-as distinct from the relation to the earth, to land and soil (to the raw material as such) as one's own. That the relation to this one moment of the conditions of production constitutes the work ing subject as owner, makes him into a working owner, this [is] historic situation No. II, which by its nature can exist only as antithesis to or, if one will, at the same time as complement of a modified form of the first-likewise negated in the first formula of capital. The third possible form, in which the worker relates as owner only to the necessaries of life, finding them on hand as the natural condition of the working subject, without relating to the land and soil, or to the instrument, or even ( therefore) to labour itself as his own, is at bottom the formula of slavery and bondage, which is likewise negated, posited as a h istorically dissolved condi tion, in the relation of the worker to the conditions of production as capital. The original forms of property necessarily dissolve into -
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the relation to the different objective moments which condition production, as one's own; they form the economic foundation of different forms of community, just as they for their part have spe cific forms of the community as presupposition . Th ese forms are essentially modified by the inclusion of labour itself among the objective conditions of production ( serfdom and slavery), through which the simply affirmative character of all forms of property included under No. 1 is lost and modified. They all contain, withi n themselves, slavery as possibility and hence as th eir own suspension. As regards No . II, where the particular kind of work-mastery of it, and, consequent upon that, an identity between property in the instrument and property in the conditions of production-wh ile it excludes slavery and bondage, can take on an ana logous negative development in the form of the caste system.>
*
*
*
On one side, h istoric processes a re presupposed which place a mass of individuals in a nation etc. in the position, if not at first of real free workers, nevertheless of such who a re so Svva/-l.El, whose only property is their labo ur capacity and the possibility of exchang ing it for values then present; individuals who confront all objective
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�:> conditions
of production as alien property, as their own not-prop but at the same time as values, as exchangeable, hence appro p riable to a certai n degree through living labour. Such historic p roc . esses of dissolu tion are also the dissol ution of the bondage relations . . which fetter the worker to land and soil and to th e lord of land and so il; but which factually presuppose his ownership of the necessaries of life-this is in truth the process of his release from the earth; dis s olution of the landed property relations, which constituted h i m as a yeoman, as a free, working small landowner or tenant (colonus) , a free peasan t;2 dissolution of the guild relations which presuppose his ownership of the instrument of labour, and which presupp ose labour itself as a craftsmanlike, specific skill, as property (not merely as the source of property); li kewise dissolution of the client relations in the various forms in which not-proprietors appear i n the r etinue of their lord as co-consumers of the surplus p roduct and wear the livery o f their master as an equivalent, participate i n his feuds, perform personal services, imaginery o r real etc . It will be seen on closer inspection that all t h ese processes of dissolution mean the dissolution of relations of production in which: use value predominates, production for direct consumption; in which exchange value and its production presupposes th e predominance of the other form; and h ence that, in all these relations, payments in kind and services i n kind predominate over payment in money and m oney-services. But this only by the way. It will likewise be found on cleser observation that all the dissolved relations were p ossible only with a definite degree of development of the material (and hence also the in tellectual) forces of p roducti o n . \V hat concerns us h e r e for t h e m o m e n t is this: t h e p rocess of dis solution, which transforms a mass of individ uals of a nation etc. into f ree wage labourers 8I1vap.€t-individuals forced solely b y their lack of property to labou r and to sell their labo ur-p resupposes on the other side not tha t these individuals' previous sources of i ncome and in part conditions of property have disappeared, but the reverse, that only their utilization has become different, that their mode of existence has changed, has gone over into o ther hands as a free fund or has even in part remained in the same hands. But this much is clear: the same process which divorced a mass of individuals from their previous relations to the objective conditions of labour, rela tions which were, in one way or another, affirmative, negated these relations, and thereby transformed these individuals into free work ers, this same process freed-8vvap.€t-th ese objective conditions of labou r land and soil, raw material, necessa ries of life, instruments of labour, money or all of t hese-from their previous state of attachment to the individuals now separated from them. They are
'; : 'erty,
-
2 . The
forms
dissolution of the still earlier of communal property a n d real
community goes without saying. [Marx]
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still there on hand, but in another form; as a free fund, in which all political etc. relations are obliterated. The objective conditions of labour now confront these unbound, propertyless individuals only in the form of values, self-sufficient values . The same process which placed the mass face to face with the ob;ective conditions of labour as free workers also placed these conditions, as capital, face to face with the free workers. The historic process was the divorce of ele ments which up until then were bound together; its result is there_ fore not that one of the elements disappears, but that each of them appears in a negative relation to the other-the (potentially) free worker on the one side, capital ( potentially) on the other. The sep aration of the obj ective conditions from the classes which have become transformed into free workers necessarily also appears at the same time as the achievement of independence by these same con ditions at the opposite pole . I f the relation of capital and wage labour is regarded not as already commanding and predominant over the whole of production,3 but as arising historically-i.e . i f we regard the original transformation of money into capital, the process of exchange between capital, still only existing Svva/Ln on one side and the free workers existing SVVa/LfL on the other-then of course one cannot help making the simple observation, out of which the economists make a great show, that the s ide which appears as capital has to possess raw materials, instruments of labour and necessaries of life so that the worker can live during production, before production is completed. This further takes the form that there m ust have taken place on the part of the capitalist an accumulation-an accumula tion prior to labour and not sprung out of it-which enables him to put the worker to work and to maintain his effectiveness, to main tain him as living labour capacity .4 This act by capital which is independent of labour, not posited by labour, is then shifted from the prehistory of capital into the present, into a moment of its real ity and of its present activity, of its self-formation. From this is ulti mately derived the eternal right of capital to the fruits of alien 3. For in that case the capital presup posed as condition of wage labou r is wage labour's own product, and is pre supposed by it as its own presupposi tion, created by it as its own presup position. [Marx] 4. Once capital and wage labour are posited as their own presupposition, as the basis presupposed to production it self, then what a p p e a r s initially is that the capitalist possesses, in addition to the fund of raw materials and necessar ies required for the labourer to repro duce himself, to create the required means of subsistence, i.e. to realiz e necessary labour, a fund of raw ma terial and means of labour in which
the worker realizes his surplus labour, i.e. t h e capitalist's profit. On further analy sis this takes the for m that the worker constantly creates a double fund for the capitalist, or in the form of capital. One part of t h i s fund constant ly 'fulfils the conditions of his own exis tence and the other part fulfils the con ditions for the existence of capital. As we have seen, in the case of the sur plus capital-and surplus capital in re lation to its antediluvian relation to labour-all real, present capital a nd each of its elements has equ a l l y been appropriated without e xc h ange, without an e qu i v alent, as objectified, appro priated alien labour. [Marx]
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labour, or rather its mode of appropriation is developed out of the simple and 'just' laws of equivalent exchange. Wealth present in the form of m oney can be exchanged for the objective conditions of labour only because and if these are sepa rated from labour itself. We saw that money can be piled up in part by way of the sheer exchange of equivalents; but this forms so insignificant a source that it is not worth mentioning historically-if iris presupposed that this money is gained through the exchange of one's own labour. The monetary wealth which becomes transformed into capital in the proper sense, into industrial capital, is rather the mobile wealth piled up through usury-especially that practised against landed property-and through mercantile profits . We shall have occasion below to speak further of both of these forms-in so far as they appear not as themselves forms of capital, but as earlier forms of wealth, as presuppositions for capital . It is inherent in the concept of capital, as we have seen-in its origin-that it begins with money and hence with wealth existing in the form of money. It is likewise inherent in it that i t appears as coming out of circulation, as the product of circulation. The forma tion o f capital thus does not emerge from landed property (here at most from the tenant [pachter] in so far as he is a dealer i n agri cultural products); or from the guild (although there is a possibility at the last point); but rather from merchant's and usurer's wealth. But the latter encounter the conditions where free labour can be purch ased only w hen this labour has been released from its objec tive conditions of existence through the process of h istory. Only then does it also enc ounter the possibility of buying these condi tions themselves . Under guild conditions, e. g . , mere money, if it is not itself guild money, masters' money, cannot buy the looms to make people work with them; how many an individual may operate etc . is prescribed. In short, the instrument itself is s till so inter twined with living labour, whose domain it appears, that it does not truly circulate. \Vhat enables moneywealth to become capital is the encounter, on one side, with free workers; and on the other side, with the necessaries and materials etc . , which previously were in bne way or another the property of the masses who have now become object-less, and are also free and purchasable. The other condition of labour, however-a certain level of skill, instrument as means of labour etc.-is already available to it in this preliminary or first period of capital, partly as a result o f the urban guild system, partly as a result of domestic industry, or industry which is attached to agriculture as an accessory. This historic process is not the product of capital, but the presupposition for it. And it is through this proc ess that the capital ist inserts himself as (historic) middle-man between landed property, or property generally, and labour. History knows nothing of the congenial fantasies according to which the
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capitalist and the workers form an association etc . , nor is there a trace of them in th e conceptual development of capital. Manufac tures may develop sporadically, locally, in a framework which still belongs to a quite different period, as e.g. in the Italian cities along side th e guilds. B u t as the sole predom inant forms of an epoch , the conditions for capital have to be developed not only locally but on a grand scale. ( Nothwithsta nding this, individual guild masters may develop into capitalists with the dissolution of the guilds; but the case is rare, in th e nature of the thing as well. As a rule, the whole guild system declines and falls, both master and journeyman, where the capitalist and the worker arise. ) It goes wit h o u t saying-and shows itself if we go more deeply into the h isto ric epoch under discussion h e re-that in truth the period of the dissolution of their earlier modes of production and modes of the worker's relation to the objective conditions of labour is at the same time a period in which monetary wealth on the one side has already developed to a certain extent, and on the other side grows and expands rapidly through the same circumstances as accel erate the above dissolution. It is itself one of th e agencies of that dissolution, while at the same time that dissoluti on i s the condition of its transformation into capita l . But the mere presence of mone tary wealth, a n d even the achievement of a kind of supremacy on its part, is in no way sufficient for this dissolution into capital to happen. Or else ancient Rome, Byzantium etc. would have ended their h i s tory with free labour and capital, or rather begun a new his tory. There, too, the dissolution of the old property relations was bound up with development of moneta ry wealth-of trade etc. But instead of leading to industry, this dissolution led in fact to the supremacy of the countryside over t h e city.-The original formation of capital does not happen, as is sometimes imagined, with capital heaping up necessaries of life and instruments of labour a n d raw materials, in short, the objective conditions of labour which have already been unbound from the soil and animated by h u man labou r.5 Capital does not create the objective conditions of labour. Rather, its original formation is that, through the h istoric process of the dissolution of the old mode of production, value existing as money-wealth is enabled, on one side, to buy the objective condi tions of labo u r; on the other side, to exchange money for the living s. The first glance shows what a non sensical circle it would be if on the one hand the workers whom capital has to put to Work in order to posi t itself as capital had first to be created, to be brought to life through its stockpiling if they waited for its command, Let There Be Workers!; while at the same time it were itself incapable of stock pililJg wi tho ut alien labour, could at most stockpile its own labour, i.e. could itself exist in the form of not-
capital and not-money; since labour, before the existence of capital, can only realize itself in forms such as craft labour, petty agriculture etc., in short, all forms which can not stockpile, or only sparingly; in forms which allow of only a small surplus product and eat up most of it. We shall have to examin e this notion of stockpiling [Aujhiiujungj still more closely later
on. [Marx)
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labour of t h e workers wh o have been s e t free. All these moments are present; th eir divorce is itself a historic process, a process of dis solution, and it is the latter which enables money to transform itself into capital. Money itself, to the extent that i t also plays an active role, does so only in so far as it intervenes in this process as itself a highly energetic solvent, and to that extent assists in the creation of the plucked object-less free workers; but certainly not by creating the objective conditions of their existence; rather by helping to speed up their separation from them-their prop ertylessness. When e.g. the great English landowners dismissed their retainers, who had, together with them, consumed the surplus product of the land; when further their tenants chased off the smaller cottagers etc., then, firstly, a mass of living labour powers was thereby thrown onto the labour market, a mass which was free in a double sense, free from the old relations of clientship, bondage and servitude, and sec ondly free of all belongings and possessions, and of every objective, material form of being, free of all property; dependent on the sale of its labour capacity o r on begging, vagabondage and robbery as its only source of income. It is a matter of h istoric record t hat they tried the latter first, but were driven off this road by gallows, stocks and whippings, onto the narrow' path to the labour market; owing to this fact, the governments, e.g. of Henry VII , VI II etc. appear as conditions of the historic dissolution process and as makers of the conditions for the existence of capital . On the other side, the neces saries of life etc., which the landowners previously ate up together with their retainers, now stood at the disposal of any money which might wish to buy them in o rder to buy labour through their instru mentality. Money neither created nor stockpiled these necessaries; they were there and were consumed and reproduced before they were consumed and reproduced through its mediation. \Vhat had c hanged was simply this, t hat these necessaries were now thrown on to the exchange market we r e separated from their direct connec tion with the mouths ·of the retainers etc. and transformed from use values into exchange values, and thus fell into the domain and under the supremacy of money weal th . Likewise with the instru ments of labour. Money wealth neither invented nor fabricated the spinning wheel and the loom . But, once unbound from their land and soil, spinner and weaver with their stools and wheels came under the command of money wealth. Capital proper does nothing -
but bring together the mass of hands and instruments which it finds on hand. It agglomerates them under its command. That is its real stockpiling; the stockpiling of workers, along with their instru ments, at particular points. This will have to be dealt with more closely in the so-called stockpiling of capital. Monetary wealth-as merchant wealth-had admittedly h elped to speed up and to dis solve the old relation s of production, and made it pos sible for the
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proprietor of land for example, as A. Smith already nicely develops,6 to exchange h is g ra i n and cattle etc. for use valu es brought from afar, instead of squanderi n g the use values he h imself p roduced, along with his retainers, and to locate his wealth in great part i n the mass of his co cons u mi n g retainers . It gave the exchange value of hi s revenue a hi gh e r significance for him. The same thing took place in regard to his tenants, who were a lr e ady s emi-capi ta l i sts -
,
but still very hemmed-in ones. The devel opment of exchange value -favoured by money existi n g in the form of the m erchant estate d issolves p roduction which is more oriented towards direct use value and its corresponding forms of property-the relations of labour to its obje cti v e conditions-and thus pushes forward towards the making of the labour market (certainly to be distinguished from the slave market ) . However, even this action of money is only possible given the presupposition of an urban artisanate res ti ng not on capi tal, but on the organization of labou r in guilds etc . Urb an labour itself h a d created means of prod uct i on for which the guilds became just as confining as were the old relations of landownership to an i m proved a gr i cul ture, which was in part itself a consequence of the larger market for agricultural products i n the cities etc . Th e other circumstances which e .g. in the sixteenth century increased the mass of c i r cula ti n g commodities as well as that of money, which created new needs and the r eby raised the exchange value of i n d igenous products etc . , raised prices etc., all of these promoted on one side the dissolution o f the old relations of p roduction, s pe d up the sepa ration of the worker o r non-worker but able-bodied individual from the objective conditions of his reproduction, and thus promo ted the transformation of money into capital . There can t h e r efor e be noth i n g more ridicuious than to conceive this original formation of capi tal as i f capital had stockpiled and created the objective conditions of prod u ction nec e ssaries, raw materials, instrument-and then offered them to the worker, who was bare of these possessions. Rather, monetary wealth in part helped to strip the labour powers of able-bodied individuals from these condi tions; and in part this process of divorce proceeded without it. When the formation of capital ha d reached a certain level, monetary we a l th could place itself as m ed i ator between the objective conditions of l i f e , thus lib erated, and the liberated but also homeless and emptyhanded labour powers, and buy the latter with th e former. But now, as far as the formation of money-wealth itself is concerned, this belongs to the prehistory of the bourgeois economy. Usury, trade, urbanization and the treasury rising with it play the main roles h ere. So, too, hoarding by tenants, peasants etc . ; al t houg h to a lesser degree. This shows at the same time that the development of exchange and of exchange value, which is everywhere mediated through trade, or .
-
6. Adam Smith, Wealth oj Nations, Vol. III,
Bk.
III, Ch.
4.
,""":
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,'
. whose mediation may be termed trade-money achieves an inde pendent existence in the merchant estate, as does circulation i n trade-brings with i t both t h e dissolution o f labour's relations of
pr operty in its conditions of existence, in one respect, and at the sa me time the dissolution of labour which is itse lf classed as one of the objective conditions of production; all these are relations which
express a predominance of use value and o f p roduction directed towards use value, as well as of a real community which is i tself still di rectly present as a presupposition of p roductio n . Production based on exchange value and the community based on the exchange of these exchange valu es-even though they seem, as we saw in the previous chapter on money, to posit property as the outcome of labour alone, and to p osit private property over the p roduct of one's own labour as condition-and labour as general condition o f wea lth, a ll presuppose a n d produce t h e separation o f labour from i ts objective conditions. This exchange of equivalents proceeds; it is only the surface layer of a production which rests on the appropria tion of alien labour without exchange , b u t with the semblance of exchange. This system of exchange rests on capital as its founda tion, and, when i t is regarded in isolation from capital, as it appears on the su rface, as an independent system, then i t is a mere illusion, but a necessary illusion. Thus there is no longer any ground for astonishment that the system o f exchange values-exchange of equivalents measured through labour- turns i n to, o r rather reveals as its hidden background, the appropriation of alien labour without exchange, complete separation of lab our and property. For the dom ination of exchange value i tself, and of exchange-value-producing production, presupposes alien labour capacity itself as an exch ange value-i . e. the separation of living labour capacity from its objective conditions; a relation to them-or to its own objectivity-as alien property; a relation to them, in a word, as capital. Only i n the period of the decline and fall o f the feudal system, but where it still struggles internally-as in England in the fourteenth and fi rst half o f the fifteenth centuries-is there a golden age for la bou r in the process of becoming emancipate d . In order for labour to relate to its objective conditions as its property again, another system m ust take the place of the system of private exchange, which, as we saw, posits the exchange o f objectified labo ur for labou r capacity, and therefore the appropriation of living labour without exchange.-Th e way in which money transforms itself into capital often shows itself quite tangibly in history; e.g. when the merchan t induces a numbe r of weavers and spinners, who until then woye and spun as a rural, sec ondary occupation, to work for him, making their secondary into their chief occupa tion; but then has them i n his power and has brought them under his command as wage labourers. To draw them away from their home towns and to concentrate them in a place of
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The Critique of Capitalism
work is a further step. In this simple process it is clear that the capi talist has prepared neither the raw material, nor the instrument, nor the means of subsistence for the weaver and the spinner. All that he has done is to restrict them little by little to one kind of work in which they become dependent on selling, on the buyer, the mer chant, and ultima tely produce only for and through him. He bought their labour originally only by buying their product; as soon as they restrict themselves to the prod uction of this exchange valu e and thus must directly produce exchange values, must exchange their labour entirely for m oney in order to survive, then they come under h is command, and at th e end even the illusion that they sold h i m products disappears. He buys their labour and takes th eir prop erty first in the form of the product, and soon after that the instru ment as well, or he leaves it to them as sham property in order to reduce his own production costs.-Th e original hist oric forms in which capital appears at first sporadically or locally, alongside the old modes of production, while exploding them little by little every where, is on one s ide manufacture proper ( not yet the factory); this springs up where mass quantities a re produced for export; for the external market-i.e. on the basis of large-scale overland and mari time commerce, in its emporiums like the I talian cities, Constanti nople, in the Flemish, Dutch cities, a few Spanish ones, such as Barcelona etc . Manufacture seizes hold initially not of the so-called urban trades, but of the rural secondary occupations, spinning and weaving, th e two which least requires guild-level skills, technical training. Apart from these great emporiums, where the external market i s its basis, where production is thus, so to speak, naturally oriented towards exchange value-i . e . manufactures directly con nected with shipping, shipbuilding itself etc.-it takes up its first residence not in the cities, but on the land, in villages lacking guilds etc. The rural subsidiary occupations have th e broad basis [charac teristic] of manufactures, w hile the urban trades demand great progress in production before they can be conducted in factory style. Likewise certain branches of production-such as glassworks, metal works, sawmills etc ., which demand a higher concentration of labour powers from t h e outset, apply more natural energy from the outset, demand mass production, likewise concentration of t h e means of labour etc . Likewise paper mills. O n the ot her s i d e the rise of t h e tenant and the transformation of the agricultural popula tion into free day-labourers. Although this transformation in the countryside is the last to push on towards its ultimate consequences and its p urest form, its beginnings there are among the earliest. Classical antiquity, which could never get beyond the urban artisan ate proper, could therefore never get to large industry . The first pre s upposition of the latter is to draw the land in all its expanse into the production not of use values but of exchange values. Class fac-
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tories, paper mills, iron works etc . cannot be operated on guild prine ciples . They demand mass production; sales to a general market; monetary wealth on the part of th eir entrepreneur-not that he cre. ates the conditions, neither th e subjective nor the objective ones; but under the old relations of property and of production these con ditions cannot be brought together.-The dissolution of relations of serfdom, like the rise of manufacture, then little by little transforms all branches of work into branches operated by capital .-Th e cities themselves, it is true, also contain an element for the formation of wage l abour proper, in the non-guild day-labourers, unskilled labour ers etc . \Vhile, as we have seen, the transform ation of money into capital presupposes a historic process which divorces the objective condi tions of labour from toe worker and makes them independent of him, it is at the same time the effect of capital and of its process, once arisen, to conquer all of production and to develop and com pl ete the divorce between labour and property, between labo u r and the obj ective conditions of labour, everywh ere . It will be seen in th e course of the further development how capita l destroys craft a n d artisan labour, w o rking small-landownership etc ., together with itself in forms in which it does not appear in opposition to labour -in small capital and in the intermediate species, the species between the old modes of production ( or th eir renewal on the foun dation of capital ) and the classical, adequate mode of production of capital itself. The only stockpiling presupposed at the origin of capital is that of monetary wealth, which, regarded in and for itself, is altogether unproductive, as it only springs up out of circulation and belongs exclusively to it. Capital rapidly forms an internal market for itself by destroying all rural secondary occupations, so that it spins, weaves for everyone, clothes everyone etc . , i n s.hort, brings th e com modities previously created as direct use values into the form of exchange values, a process which comes about by itself through the separation of the workers from land and soil and from property ( even in the form of serf pr operty ) in the conditions of produ ction . With t h e urban crafts, although they rest essentially o n exchange and on the creation of exchange values, the direct and chief aim of this p rod uction is subsistence as craftsmen, a s master-journeymen, hence use value; not wealth, not exchange value as exchange value. Production is therefore ahvays subord inated to a given consump tion, supply to demand, and expands only slowly. The production of capitalists and wage labourers is thus a chief product of capital's realization process. Ordinary economics, which looks only at the things produced, forgets this completely. When obj ectified labour is, in this process, at the same time posited a s the worker's non-objectivity, as the objectivity of a subjectivity antitheti-
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276
cal to the worker, as property of a will alien to him, then capital is ne c es sarily at the same time the capitalist, an d the idea held by some socialists that we need capit al but not t h e ca pi tali s t s is alto gether wrong . I t is posited within the conce p t of capital that the obj ective conditions of l abour-and these are Its own pro duc t t ake on a personality to wa rds it, or, what is the same, that they are pos ited as the pr o p erty of a pe r son al it y alien to the worker. The con cept of capital contains the capitalist. * * * -
*
*
*
F. Pop ulation, Overpopulation, and Malthus *
*
*
Malthus's theory, which in ci d entally was not his invention, but whose fame he a pp r opria t e d t h r o ugh the clerical fanati_ ci s m with which he propounded i t ac t ually on ly th rough th e weigh t he placed on it-is significant in two respects : ( 1 ) beca use he gives brutal expression to the brutal vi ewp oi n t of capital; ( 2 ) because he asserted the fac t , of overpopulation in all forms of society. Proved it he has not, for there is nothing more uncritical than his m o tl e y compilations from hi s to ria n s and travellers' de sc r i pti on s . His conception is altogether f al s e and childish ( 1 ) because he regards overpopulation a s being of the same kind in all the different historic phases of economic devel opment; does not understand their sp e ci fi c difference, and hence stupidly reduces these very complicated a n d varying relations to a single relation, two e qu ati ons in which the natural re p r o duc t i o n of h u m an i ty appears on the one side, and the natural reprodu ct io n of edible plants ( o r means of subsistence ) on t he other, as two natural series, the former geometric a n d the l a t t er arithmetic in progression. In this way he transforms the h i s t ori cally distinct relations into an abstract numerical r e lat ion, which he has fis hed p ure ly out of thin a ir, and wh i ch rests neither on natural nor on h istorical l a w s . There is allegedly a natural difference between the reproduction o f man kind and e.g. g ra i n This baboon thereby implies that the increase of humanity is a p u rely natural process, which requires external restraints, checks, to prevent it from p r oceed i n g in geometrical pro g r e ss i o n This geometrical reproduction is the natural repro du c ti o n process of mankind. He would find in history that pop ul a ti on pro ceeds in very different rela t i o ns and that o,v erpo pulati on is likewise a hi s t or ica l ly determined relation, i n no way determined by a b st r ac t numbers 'or by the absolute l im i t of the productivity o f the necessar ies of life, but by limits posited, rather by specific conditions of pro duction. As well as restricted nu me r i ca l l y How small do the n um bers which meant ov e r pop ula t io n for the Athenians appear to us! Secondly, restricted according to character. A n ov e rpop u lat ion of -
,
.
.
,
.
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free Athenians who become transformed into colonists is signifi cantly different from an overpopulation of workers who become transformed into workhouse inmates. Similarly the begging overpop ulation which consumes the surplus produce of a monastery is dif ferent from that which forms in a factory. It is Malthus who abstracts from these specific historic laws of the movement of popu lation, which are indeed the history of the nature of h umanity, the natural laws , but natural laws of humanity only at a specific historic development, with a development of the forces of production deter mined by humanity's own process of history. Malthusian man, abstracted from historically determined man, exists only in his brain; hence also the geometric method of reproduction correspond ing to this natural Malthusian man. Real h istory thus appears to him in such a way that the reproduction of his natural h umanity is not an abstraction from the historic process of real reproduction, but j u st the contrary, that real reproduction is an application of the Malth usian theory. Hence the inherent conditions o f population as well as of overpopulation at every stage of h istory appear to h im as a series of external checl�s which has prevented the population from developing in the Malthusian form . The conditions in which mankind historically produces and reproduces itself appear as bar riers to the reproduction of the Malthusian natural man, who is a Malthusian creature. On the other hand, the production of the nec essaries of life-as i t is checked, determined by human action-ap pears as a check which it posits to itself. The ferns would cover the entire ea rth . Their rep roduction would stop only where space for them ceased. They would obey no arithmetic proportion . I t i s hard to say where Malthus has discovered that the reproduction of volun tary natural products would stop for intrinsic reasons, without exter nal checks. He transforms the immanent, historically changing limits of the human reproduction process into outer barriers; and the outer barriers to natural reproduction into immanent limits or natural laws of reproduction. ( 2 ) He stupidly relates a specific quantity of people to a specific quantity of necessaries.7 Ricardo immediately and correctly con fronted h im with the fact that the quantity of grain available is completely irrelevant to the worker if he has no employment; that it is therefore the means of employment and not of subsistence which put h im into the category o f surplus population . s Blit this should be conceived more generally, and relates to the social mediation as s uch, through which the individual gains access to the means of his reproduction and creates them; hence i t relates to the conditions of production and his relation to them. There was no barrier to the reproduction o f the Athenian slave other than the producible neces7. T. R. M a l thus, An Inquiry into t h e Nature and Progress o f Rent, London, 1 8 1 5, p. 7 .
8. R i c a r d o , O n t h e Principles of Political Economy, p. 49 3 .
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The Critique of Capitalism
saries . And we never hear that there were surplus slaves in antiquit y. The call for them increased, rather. There was, however, a sur p lus population of non-workers (in the immediate sense), who were n ot too many in relation to the necessaries available, but who had lost the conditions under which they could appropriate them. Th e invention of surplus labourers, i.e. of p ropertyless people who work, belongs to the period of capital . The beggars who fastened them selves to the monasteries and helped them eat up their surplus prod uct are in the same class as the feudal retainers, and this shows that the surplus produce could not be eaten up by the small number of its owners. It is only another form of th e retainers of ol d, o r of th e menial servants of today.· The overpopulation e.g. among hunting peoples, which shows itself in the warfare between the tribes, proves not that the earth could not support their small numbers, but rather that the condition of their reproduction required a great amount of territory for few people. Never a relation to a non-existent absolute mass of means of subsistence, but rather rela tion to the conditions of reprod uction, of the production of these means, including likewise the conditions of reproduction of human beings, of the total population, of relative surplus population. This surplus purely relative : in no way related to the means of subsist ence as such, but rather to the mode of p roducing them . Hence also only a surplus at this state of development. *
*
*
G. Cap itali sm, l\1achinery and Automation The labour process.-Fixed capital. Means of labour. Machine. Fixed capital. Transposition of powers of labour into powers of cap ital both in fixed and in circulating capital.-To what extent fixed capital (machine) creates value .-Lauderdale. Machine presupposes a mass of workers. *
*
*
As long as the means of labour remains a means of labour in the p roper sense of the term, such as it i s directly, historically, adopted by capital and included in its realization process, it undergoes a merely formal modification, by appearing now as a means of labour not only in regard to its materi a l side, but also at the same time as a particular mode of the presence of capital, determined by its total process-as fixed capital. But, once adopted into the production process of capital, the means of labour passes through different metamorphoses, whose culmination is the machine, or rather, an automatic system of machinery (system of machinery : the auto matic one is merely its most complete, most adequate form, and alone transforms machinery into a system), set in motion by an
The Grundrisse 279 ,,,: . :: ff;'�" st� a,u to maton, a moving power that moves itself; this automaton con , « , ':;( 'sisting of numerous mechanical and intellectual organs, so that the ; ':/ l ' ,wo rkers themselves are cast merely as its conscious linkages. In the ' < nT inachine, and even more in machinery as an automatic system, the ':,; ;!i , _use value, i.e. the material quality of the means of labour, is trans ' : , .formed into an existence adequate to fixed capital and to capital as ;>; such; and the form in which it was adopted into the production ' : ,': : process of capital, th e direct means of labour, is superseded by a , form posited by capital itself and corresponding to it. In no way " does the machine appear as the individual worker's means of labour. " " Its distinguishing characteristic is not in the least, as with the means of labour, to transmit the worker's activity to the object; this , ; � ac tivity, rather, is posited in such a way tha t it merely transmits the machine's work, the machine's action, on to the raw material-su' pervises it and guards against interruptions . Not as with the instru ment, which the worker animates and makes into his organ with h is ski11 and strength, and whose h andling therefore depends on his vir tuosity. Rather, it is the machine which possesses skiH and strength in place of the worker, is itself the virtuoso, with a soul of its own in the mechanical laws acting through it; and it consumes coal, oil etc. ( matieres instrument ales ) , just as the worker consumes food, to keep up its p erpetual motion. The worker's activity, reduced to a mere abstraction of activity, is determined and regulated on all sides by the movement of the machinery, and not the opposite. The sci ence which compels the inanimate limbs of the machinery, by their construction, to act purposefully, as an automaton, does not exist in the worker's consciousness, but rather acts upon him through the machine as an alien power, as the power of the machine itsel f. The appropriation of living labour by objectified labour-of the power or activity which creates value by value existing for-itself-which lies ip. the concept of capital, is posited, in production resting on machinery, as the character of the production process itself, includ ing its material elements and its material motion. The production process has ceased to be a labour process in the sense of a process deminated by labour as its governing unity. Labour appears, rather, merely as a conscious organ, scattered among the individual living workers at numerous points of the mechanical system; subsumed under the total process of the machinery itself, as itself only a link of the system, whose unity exists not in the living workers, but rather in the living ( active ) machinery, which confronts h is individ ual, insignificant doings as a mighty organism. In machinery, objec tified labour confronts living labour within the labour process itself as the power which rules it; a power which, as the appropriation of living labour, is the form of capital . The transformation of the means of labour into machinery, and of living labour into a mere living accessory of this machinery, as the means of its action, also
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The Critique of Capitalism
p osits the absorption of the labour process in its material character
as a mere moment of the realization process of capital . The increase of the productive force of labour and the greatest possible negation
of necessary labour is the necessary tendency o f capital, a s we have seen. The transformation o f the means of labour into machinery is
the realization o f this tendency. I n machinery, objectified labour
materially confronts living labour as a ruling power and as an active s ubsumption of the latter under itself, not only by appropriating it,
b u t in the real production process itself; the relation o f capital as value which appropriates value-creating activity is, i n fixed capital
existing as machinery, posited at the same time a s the relation
o f the use value of capital to the use value of labour capacity;
further, the value objectified in machinery appears as a presupposi. bon against which the value-creating power o f the individual labollI
capacity i s an infinitesimal, vanishing magnitude; the p roduction in enormous mass quantities which is posited with machinery destroys every connection of the p roduct with the direct need o f the produ.
cer, and hence with direct use value; it is already posited i n the form of the p roduct's production and in the relations in which i t is
p roduced that it i s produced only as a conveyor o f value, and its use
value only as condition to that en d . In machinery, objec t i fi ed labour
itself appears not only i n the form o f product or of the product
employed as means of labour, but i n the form o f the force of pro d uction itself. Th e development o f the m eans of labour into machi nery is not an accidental moment of capital, but is rather the histor
ical resh aping of the traditional, inherited means of labour i n to a
form adequate to capital. The accumulation of knowledge a n d of
skill, of the general productive forces of the social brain, is thus
absorbed into capital, as opposed to labour, and hence appears as an attribute of capital, and more specifically o f
fixed capital,
in s o far
as i t enters i nto the production process as a means o f production
p roper. l\1 achinery appears, then, as the most adequate form o f fixed capital, a n d fixed c a p i t a l , i n so far as capital's relations with itself are concerned, appears as the most adequate form of capital as such . In another respect, h o wever, i n s o far as fixed capital i s con demned to an existence within the confines o f a specific use value,
i t does not correspond to the concept o f capital, which, as value, is
indifferent to every specific form o f use value, a n d can adopt or
shed any o f them as equivalent incarnations . I n this respect, as
regards capital's external rel ations, i t i s
circulating capital
appears as the adequate form of capital, and not fixed capital .
which
Further, in so far as machinery develops with the accumulation
of society's science, of productive force generally, general social
labour presents itself not in labour but i n capita l . The productive
force of society is measured i n
fixed capital,
exists there i n its objec
tive form; and, inversely, the productive force of capital grows with
this general progress, which capital appropriates free of charge. This
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281
. i s n o t t h e place t o g o into t h e development of m a chinery i n detail; ra ther only i n its general aspect; i n so far as the means of labour, as a ph y sical thing, loses its direct form, becomes rxed capital, and
confronts the worker physicall y as capital. I n machinery, knowledge appears as alien, external to him; and living labour [as] subsumed under self-activating objectified labour. The worker appears as super
fluous to the extent that his action is n o t determined by [capi tal's] requirements.
The full development of c a pital, therefore, takes place-or capital has posited the mode of production corresponding to it-only when
the means of labour has not only taken the economic form of rxed capital, but has also been suspended in its immediate form, and when rxed capital appears as a mach i n e within t h e producti on proc ess, opposite labour; and the entire p roduction process appears as
not s u b sumed under the direct skilfulness of the worker, but rather
a s th e
technological
application o f science.
[It
is,]
h ence, the
tendency of capital t o give production a scientific character; direct
labour [is] reduced to a mere moment of this proces s . As with the
transformation o f value i n to capital, so does it appear in the further
development of capital, that i t presupposes a certain given historical
development of the productive forces on one side-science too [is] among these productive forces-and, on the other, drives and
forces them further onward s . Th us the quantitative extent a n d the effectiveness ( intens i t y ) to which capital is developed as fi xed capital indicate the general
degree to which capital i s developed as capital, as power over living labour, and to which i t has conquered the production process as such . A lso, i n the sense that i t expresses the accumulation of objec tified productive forces, and l ikewise of objectified labour. However, while capital gives itself its a dequate form as use value within the production process o n l y in the form of machinery and other mate
rial manifestations of fixed capital, such as railways etc . ( to which we shal l return later ) , this in no way means that this use value machinery as such- is capital, or that its existence as machinery is
identical with its existence as capita l ; any more than gold would cease to have use value as gold i f i t were n o longer money. Machi nery does not lose its use value as soon as it ceases to be capita l .
\Vhile mach i ner y is t h e m o s t appropriate form o f t h e u s e v a l u e of fixed capital, i t does not a t all follow th a t therefore s ubsumptioIi under the social relation of capital is the most appropriate and ulti mate social relation of production for the application of machiner y . To the degree that labour time-the m e re quantit y of labour-is
posited by capital a s the sole determinant element, to that degree
does direct labour and its quantity disapp e a r as the determinant
principle of product i on-of the creation of use values-and is
reduced both quantita tively, to a smaller proportion, and qual i ta -
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T he Critique of Capitalism
tively, as an, of course, indispensable but s ubordinate moment, com pared to general scientific labour, technological application of natu ral sciences, on one side, and to the general productive force a risin g from social combination [Gliederung] in total production on the other side-a combination which appears as a natural fruit of social labour (although it is a h istoric product ) . Capital th us works towards its own dissolution as the form dominating production. *
*
*
Fixed capital and circulating capi tal as two particular kinds of capital. Fixed capital and continuity of the production process. Machinery and living labour. (Business of inventing) \Vhile, up to now, fixed capital and circulating capital appeared merely as different passing aspects of capital, they have . now hard ened into two particular modes of its existence, and fixed capital appears separately alongside circulating capita l . They a re now two particular kinds of capital. In so far as a capital is examined i n a particular branch of production, it appears as divided into these two portions, or splits into these two kinds of capital in certain p [ rop ] ortions . The division within the production p rocess, originally between means of labour and material of labour, and finally p roduct of labour, now appears as circulating capital (th e las t two ) and fixed capital [the first.] 9 The split within capital as regards its merely physical aspect has now entered into its form itself, and appears as differentiating it. From a viewpoint such as Lauderdale's etc . , who would like to have capital as such, separately from labour, create value and hence also surplus value ( or profit ) , fixed capital-namely that whose physical presence or use value is machinery-is the form which gives their superficial fallacies still the greatest sem b lance of validity. The answer to them, e.g. in Labour Defended, [is] that the road builder may share [profits] with the road-user, but the " road" itself cannot do SO . l Circulating capital-presupposing tha t i t really passes through its different phases-brings about the decrease or increase, the brevity or length of circulation time, the easier or more troublesome com pletion of the different stages of circulation, a decrease of the sur plus value which could be created in a given period of time without these interruptions-either because the number of reproductions grows smaller, or because the quantity of capital continuously engaged in the. production process is reduced . In both cases this is not a reduction o f the initial value, but rather a reduction of the rate of growth . From the moment, however, when fixed capital has 9. The manuscript has : ". . . now ap-
pears as circulating capital (the first
two ) and fixed capital." 1. H o d g s k i n , L a b o ur Defended, p .
16.
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283
}li:(, de\,eloped to a certain extent-and this extent, as we indicated, is �;�:� .th e measure of the development of large inpustry generally-hence �ii ;· fixed capital increases in proportion to the development of large i:��� in dustry's productive forces-it is itself the objectification of these ::; ; pr oductive forces, as presupposed product-from this instant on, ;.::�... . every interruption of the production process acts as a direct reduc1 , • ti o n of capital itself, of its initial value. The value of fixed capital is :'I : . re produced only in so far as it is used up in the production process . , Through disuse it loses its use value without its value passing on to the product . Hence, the greater the scale on which fixed capital develops, in the sense in which we regard it here, the more does the continuity of the production process or the constant flow of repro duc tion become an externally compelling condition for the mode of :� . . production founded on capital. In machinery, the appropriation of living labour by capital achieves a direct reality in this respect as well : It is, firstly, the anal ysis and application of mechanical and chemical laws, arising directly out of science, which enables the machine to perform the same labour as that previously performed by the worker. However, ; . ' the development of machinery along this path occurs only when large industry has already reached a higher stage, and all the sciences have been pressed into the service of capital; and when, secondly, the available machinery itself already provides great capabilities. Invention then becomes a business, and the application of science to direct production itself becomes a prospect which determines and solicits it. But this is not the road along which machinery, by and large, arose, and even less the road on which it progresses in detail . This road is, rather, dissection [Analyse] -through the division of labour, which gradually transforms the workers' operations into more and more mechanical ones, so that at a certain point a mecha nism can step into their places . (See under economy of power') Thus, the specific mode of working here appears directly as becom ing transferred from the worker to capital in the form of the machine, and his own labour capacity devalued thereby. Hence the . workers' struggle against machinery. \Vhat was the living worker's activity becomes the activity of the machine. Thus the appropria tion ·of labour by capital confronts the worker in a coarsely senso us form; capital absorbs labour into itself-"as though its body were by love possessed."!! .
Contradiction between the foundation of bourgeois production ( value as measure ) and its development. Machines etc.
The exchange of living labour for objectified labour-i .e. the pos iting of social labour in the form of the contradiction of capital and wage labour-is the ultimate development of the value-relation and 2.
..
A/S hii t t' es Lieb im Leibe,"
in Leipzig.
Goethe, Faust, Part I, A c t
S, Auerbach's Cellar
284
The Critique of Capitalism
of production resting on value. Its presupposition is-and remains -the mass ·of direct labour time, the quantity of labour employed, as the determinant factor in the production of wealth. But to the degree that large industry develops, the creation of re al wealth comes to depend less on labour time and on the amount of labour employed than on the power of the agencies set in motion durin g labour time, whose "powerful effectiveness" is itself in turn out of all proportion to the direct labour time spent on their produc tion, but depends rather on the general state of science and on the progress of technology, or the application of this science to produc tion. ( Th e development of this science, especially natural science, and all others with the latter, is itself in turn related to the develop ment of material production . ) Agriculture, e.g., becomes merely the application of the science of material metabolism, its regulation for the greatest advantage of the entire body of society. Real wealth manifests itself, rather-and large industry reveals this-in the monstrous disproportion between the labour time applied, and its product, as well as in the qualitative imbalance between labour, reduced to a pure abstraction, and the power of the production process it superintends. Labour no longer appears so much to be included within the production process; rather, the h uman being comes to relate more as watchman and regulator to the production process itself. ( \\That holds for machinery holds likewise for the combination of h uman activities and the development of h uman intercourse. ) No longer does the worker insert a modified natural thing [Naturgegenstand] as middle link between the object [Objekt] and himself; rather, he inserts the process of nature, transformed into an industrial p rocess, as a means between himself and inorganic nature, mastering it. , He steps to the side of the pro duction process instead of being its chief actor. In this transforma tion, it is neither the direct h uman labour he himsel f performs, nor the time during which he works, but rather the appropriation of his own general productive power, his understanding of nature and h is mastery over it by virtue of his presence as a social body-it is, in a word, the development of the social individual which appears as the great foundation-stone of production and of wealth . The theft of alien labour time, on which the present wealth is based, appears a miserable foundation in face . of this new one, created by large-scale industry itself. As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few, for the development of the general powers of human head. With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, material production
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285
process is stripped of the form o f penury a n d antith es i s . The free development of individualities, a n d h ence not the reduction of nec essary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the gen
eral reduction of the necessary labour o f society to a minimum,
which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development o f the individuals in t h e t i m e s e t free, and with t h e means created, for
all of th e m . Capital itself is the moving contradiction, [in J that it
presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while i t posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth .
Hence it diminishes labour time in the necessary form so as to
increase it in the s uperfluous form; hence posits the superfluous in
growing measure as a condition-question of life or death-for the
necessary. On the one side, then, it calls to life all the powers of sci
ence a n d of nature, as of social combination and of social inter course, in order to make the creation of wealth independent ( rela tivel y ) of th e labour time employed on it. On the other side, it
wants to use l a b o u r t i m e as the measuring rod for the g i a n t social
forces thereby created, a n d to confine them within the limits
required to maintain the already created value as value . Forces of
production a n d social relations-two different sides of the develop ment of the social individual-appear to capital as mere means, a n d
a r e merely means f o r i t t o produce on its limited foundation. I n
fact, however, they a r e t h e material conditions to blow this founda
tion sky-hig h . "Truly wealthy a nation, when the working day is 6 rather than 1 2 h o u rs .
time"
( real wealth ) ,
Wealth
is not command over surplus labour
"but rather,
disposable time outside that every individual a n d the whole ( The Source and Remedy etc., 1 8 2 1 , p. 6 )
needed in direct production, for society . "
Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric tele
graphs, self-acting mules etc. These a re products of h uman indus
try; natural material transformed into organs of the h um a n will over
nature, or of human participation in n a ture. They a re
human brain, created by the human hand;
organs of the
the power of knowledge,
objecti fi e d . The devel opment of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge h a s become a
duction,
direct force of
Pro
and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process o f
social l i f e itself h ave c o m e u n d e r t h e control of t h e general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it. To what degree the
powers of social production have been produced, not only in the form of knowledge, but also as immediate organs of social practice, of the real life proces s .
Significance o f the development o f fi x e d capital
(for the develop ment of capital generally) . Relation between the creation of fixed capital and circulating capital. Disposable time . To create it, chief role of capital. Contradictory form of the same in capital.-Produc-
The Critique of Capitalism
286
tivity of labour and production of fixed capital. ( The Source and Remedy. ) -Use and consume: Econom i s t . Durability of fixed capital The development of fixed capital indicates in still another respect the degree of development of wealth generally, or of capital. The
a i m of production oriented directly towards use value, as well as of that directly oriented towards exchange value, is the p roduct itsel f, destined for consumptio n . The part of production which is oriente d
towards the production of fixed capital does not p ro d uce direct objects of individual gratification, nor direct exchange values; at
least not directly realizable exchange values .
Hence, only when a certain degree of productivity has already been reached-so that a part of production time is sufficient for immediate production-can an increasingly large part be applied to the production of the means of production. This requires that society be able to wait; tha t a
large part of the wealth already created can be withdrawn b o th
from immediate consumption and from production for immediate consumption, i n o rd e r to employ this part for labour which is
immediately productive
not
( within the material p roduction process
itself ) . This requires a certain level of productivity and of relative
overabundance, and, more specifically, a level directly related to the
transformation of circulating capital into fixed capita l . A s th e mag nitude of relative surplus labour depends on the productivity of nec essary labour, so does the magnitude of labour time-l i vin g as well as objectified- employed on the production of fixed capital depend on the productivity of the labour time spent in the direct produc tion of products. Surplus population ( from this standpoint ) , as well as surplus production, i s a condition for th is . That is, the outp ut of the time employed in direct production must be larger, relatively, than
is
directly
required
for
the
reproduction
employed in these branches of industry. The
of
the
smaller
capital
th e direct
fruits borne by fixed capital, the less i t intervenes i n the direct pro duction process, the greater must be this relative surplus population and surplus production; thus, more to build railways, canals, a que ducts, telegraphs et c . than to build the machinery directly active in
th e direct production proces s. Hence-a subject to which we will
return later-in the constant under-and over-p roduction of modern
industry-constant fluctuations a n d convulsions arise from the dis
p roportion, when sometimes too little, then again too much circu
lating capital is transformed into fixed capital .
( The creation of a large quantity of disposable time
apart from
necessary labour time for society generally and each of its members
( i . e . room for the development of the individuals' full productive
forces, hence those of society also ) , this creation of not-labour time appears in the stage of capital, as of all earlier ones, as not-labour
The Grundrisse
2 87
time, free time, for a few. \Vhat capital a dds is that it increases the
surplus labour time of the mass by all means of art and science,
because i t s wealth consists directly in the appropriation of surplus
la bour time; since value directly its purpose, not use val u e . I t is thus, despite itself, instrumental i n creating the means of social dispos
able time, in order to reduce labour time for the whole society t o a
diminishing m i n i m u m , and thus to free everyone's time for their
own development. But its tendency always, o n the one side, to create disposable time, on the other, to convert it into surplus laboUT. If it succeeds too well at the first, then it suffers from s u rplus p roduction, a n d then necessary labour is interrupted, because no sur plus labour can be realized by capital. The m ore this contradiction develops, th e more does it become evident that the growth of the
forces o f p ro d uction can no longer be bound up with the appropria
t ion o f alien labour, but that the mass of workers must themselves
appropriate their own surplus labour. Once they have done so-and
disposable time
thereby ceases to have a n
antithetical
existence
then, on one side, necessary labour time will b e measured b y the
needs of the social individual, and, on the other, the development
of the power of social production will grow so rapidly that, even
tholigh production i s now calculated for the wealth of all,
time
disposable
will grow for all. For real wealth is the developed productive
power of all individuals. The measure of wealth i s then n o t any
longer, i n a n y way, labour time, but rather disposable time . erty, and disposable time as existing
to surplus labour time;
Labour
posits wealth itself as founded on pov
time as the measure of value
in and because of the antithesis ·
or, the p o s i ti n g of an individual's entire time
as l a bour time, a n d his degradation therefore to mere worker, sub s umption under labour.
The most developed machinery thus forces the worker to work longer than the savage does, or than he himself did with the simplest, crudest tools. > " I f the entire labour of a country were sufficient only to raise the
s upport of the whole population, there would be no
surplus labour,
consequently n o th in g that could be allowed to accumulate as capie tal . If i n one year the people raises enough for the support of two
years, o n e year's consumption m u s t perish, or for o n e year men
must cease from produc t i v e labour. But the possessors of [the] surplus produce or capital . . employ people upon something not directly and immediately productive, e . g . in the erection of machin e ry . So it goes o n . " ( The Source and Remedy of the National Dif ficulties, P .4 ) .
< As the basis on which large industry rests, the appropriation of
alien labour time, ceases, with i ts development, to make up or to create wealth, so does
direct labour
as such cease to be th e basis of
production, since, i n one resp ect, it is transformed more into a
supervisory and regulatory activity; but then al so beca use the prod-
288
The Critique of Capitalism
uct ceases to be the p ro d uc t of isolated direct labour, and the com bination of social activity appears, rather, as the p roducer. "As soon as the division o f labour is developed, almost every piece of work done by a single individual is a part of a whole, having no value or
utility of itself. There is nothing on which the labourer can seize: this is my produce, this I will keep to myself ." ( Labour Defended, p. 2 5 , 1 , 2, xi. ) In direct exchange, individual direct labour appears as realized i n a particular product or part of the product, and its communal, social character-its character as objectification of general labour and satisfaction of the general need-as posited through exchange alone. I n the production p rocess of large-scale industry, by contrast, just as the c o nquest of the forces of n a ture by the social intellect is the precondition of the p roductive power of th e means of labour as developed into the automatic proc ess, o n one side, so, on the other, is the labour of the individual in
its direct presence posited as suspended individual, i.e. as social, labour. Thus the other basis of this mode of production falls away . > The labour time employed i n the production o f fixed capital relates to that employed i n the production of circulating capital, within the production process o f capital itself, a s does surplus labour time to necessary labour time. To the degree that production aimed at the satisfaction of immediate need becomes more produc tive, a greater part o f p ro d uction can b e directed towards the need of production itself, o r the pro d uction of means of p roducti o n . I n so f a r a s the production of fixed capital, even i n its physical aspect, is directed immediately not towards the production of direct use values, or towards the production of values required for the direct reproduction of capital-i . e . those which themselves i n turn repre sent use value in the value-c reation process-but rather towards the production of the means of value creation, that is, not towards value as an immediate object, but rather towards value creation, towards the means o f realization, as an immediate object of produc tion-the p roduction of value p osited physically i n the object of p roduction itself, a s the aim . of production, the objectification of p roductive force, the value producing power of capital-to that extent, i t is in the p roduction of fixed capital that capital posits itself as end-in-itself and appears active as capital, to a higher power than it does in the production of circulating capital. Hence, in this respect as well, the dimension already pos sessed by fixed capital, which its production occupies within total p ro duction, is the mea s uring rod of the development of wealth found ed on the mode of production of capital. "The number of workers depends as much on circulating capital as it depends on the quantity of products of co-existing labour, which labourers are allowed to consume." ( Labour Defended, p . 20. )
The Grundris se
289
I n a l l the excerpts cited above from various economists fixed capi tal is regarded as the part of capital which is locked into the p roduc tion process . "Floating capital is consumed; fixed capital is merely used in the great process of production . " ( Economist, VI, 1 . ) This wrong, and holds only for the part of circulating capital which is itself consumed by the fixed capital, th e matieres instrumentales. The only thing consumed "in the great p rocess of production," if this means the immediate production p rocess, is fixed capital. Con sumption within the production process is, however, in fact use, wearing-out. Furthermore, the greater durability of fixed capital mus t not be conceived as a purely physical quality. The iron and the wood which make up th e bed I sleep in, or the stones making up the h ouse I live in, o r the marble statue which decorates a palace, are j u s t as durable as iron and wood etc. used for machinery. But durability is a condition for the instrument, the means of pro duction, not only on the technical ground that metals etc. are the chief material of all machinery, but rather because th e instrument is destined to play the same role constantly in repeated processes of production . I ts durability as means of p ro duction is a required qual ity of its use valu e . The more often i t must be replaced, the costlier it is; the larger the part of capital which woul d have to be spent On it uselessly. I ts durability is its existence as means of p roductio n . I t s duration i s a n increase of its productive force. With circulating cap ital, by contrast, in so far as i t is not transformed into fixed capital, durability is in no way connected with the act of production itself and is therefore not a conceptually posited moment. The fact that among the articles thrown into the cons umption fund there are some which are i n turn characterized as fixed capital because they are consumed slowly, and can be consumed by many individuals in series, is connected with further determinations ( renting rather than buying, interest etc . ) with which we a re not yet here concerned. "Since the general introduction o f soulless mechanism in British manufactures, people have with rare exceptions been treated as a . secondary a n d subordinate machine, a n d fa r more attention has been given to the perfection of the raw materials of wood and metals than to those of body and spirit . " ( p . 3 1 . Robert Owen : Essays on the Formation of the Human Character, 1 84 0, London . )
Real saving--e conomy- = saving of labour time = development of productive force. Suspension of the contradiction between free . . time and labour time.-TTue conceptlOn of the process of soczal production. < Real economy-saving-consists of the saving of labour time ( minimum ( an d minimization ) of p roduction costs ) ; but t is . saving identical with development of the p ro ductlve f orce. Henc e ill no way abstinence from consumption, but rather the development
�
290
The Critique of Capitalism
of power, of capabilities of production, and hence both of the capa bilities as well as the means of consumption. The capability to con sume is a condition of consumption, hence its primary means, and this capability is the development of an individual potential, a force of production. The saving of labour time [is 1 equal to an in crease of free time, i.e. time for the full development of the individual, which in turn reacts back upon the productive power of labour as itself the greatest productive power. From the standpoint of the direct production process it can be regarded as the production of fixed capital, this fixed capital being man himself. It goes witho ut saying, by the way, that direct labour time itself cannot remain in the abstract antithesis to free time in which it appears from the perspective of bourgeois economy. Labour cannot become play, as Fourier would like,3 although it remains his great contribution to have expressed the suspension not of distribution, but of the mode of production itself, in a higher form, as the ultimate object. Free time-which is both idle time and time for higher activity-has naturally transformed its possessor into a different subject, and he then enters into the direct production process as this different sub ject. This process is then both discipline, as regards the h uman being in the process of becoming; and, at the same time, practice [Ausiibung] , experimental science, materially creative and 0 bjecti fying science, as regards the human being who has become, in whose head exists the accumulated knowledge of society. For both, in so far as labour requires practical use of the hands and free bodily movement, as in agriculture, at the same time exercise. As the system of bourgeois economy has developed for us only by degrees, so too its negation, which is its ultimate resul t . We are still concerned now with the direct production proces s . When we con sider bourgeois society in the long view and as a whole, then the final result of the process of social production always appears as the society itself, i.e. the h uman being itself in its social relations . Everything th at has a fixed form, such as the product etc ., appears as merely a moment, a vanishing moment, in this movement. The direct production process itself here appears only a s a moment. Th e conditions and objectifications of the process are themselves equally moments of it, and its only subjects are the individuals, but individ uals in mutual relationships, which they equally reproduce and pro duce anew . The constant process of their own movement, in which they renew themselves even as they renew the world of wealth they create. > 3.
Fourier, Le Nouveau Monde industriel et socifitaire, Vol. VI,
pp.
2 42-5 2 .
T h e Grundrisse
291
H . The End o f Capi talism * * * Beyond a c ertain point, the development of the powers of p roduction becomes a barrier for capital; hence the capital relation a barrier for the development of the productive powers of labour. When it has reached this point, capital, i . e . wage labour, enters into the same relation towards the development of social wealth and of the forces of production as the guild system, serfdom, slavery, and is necessarily stripped off as a fetter. The last form of servitude as sumed by h u man activity, that of wage labour on one side, capital on the other, is thereby cast off like a skin , and this casting-off itself is the result of the mode of production corresponding to capital; the material and mental conditions of the negation of wage labour and of capital, themselves already the negation o f earlier forms of unfree social p roduction, are themselves results of its production process . The growing incompatibility between the p roductive development of society and its h i therto existing relations o f production expresses itself in bitter contradictions, crises, spasms. The violent destruction of capital not by relations external to it, but rather as a condition of its self-preservation, is the most striking form in which advice is
given it to be gone and to give room to a higher state of social pro duction. It is not only the growth of scientific power, but the meas ure in which it is already posited as fixed capital, the scope and width i n which it is realized and has conquered the totality of pro duction. It is, likewise, the development of the pop ula tion e tc . , i n short, o f a l l moments of production; in t h a t t h e productive pOwer of labour, like the application of machinery, is related to the popu lation; whose growth in and fo r itself already the p resupposition as well as the result of the growth of the use values to be reproduced and h ence a lso to be consumed . Since this decline of p rofit signifies the same as the decrease of immediate labour relative t o the size of the objectified labour which i t reproduces and newly posits, capital will attempt every means of checking the smallness of the relat ion of living labo ur to the size of the capital generally, hence also o f the surplus value, if expressed as profit, relative to th e presupposed capi tal, by reducing the allotment made to necessary labour and by still more expanding the quantity of surplus labour with regard to the whole labour employed. Hence the highest development ·of produc tive power together with the greatest expansion of existing wealth will coincide with depreciation of capital, degradation of the labourer, and a most straitened exhaustion of his vital powers . These contradictions l ead to explosions, cataclysms, crises, in which by momentaneous s uspension of labou r and annihilation of a great portion o f capital th e latter is violently reduced to the point wh ere it can go on. These contradictions, of course, lead to explosions,
292
The Critique of Capitalism
crises, in which momentary suspension of all labour and annihila tion of a great part of the capital violently lead it back to the point where it is enabled [to go on] fully employing its productive powers without committing suicide.4 Yet, these regularly recurring catas trophes lea d to their repetition on a higher scale, and finally to its violent overth row . * * *
I . Capitalism, Alienation, and Communism Alienation of the conditions of labour with the development of cap ital. (Inversion) . The inversion is the foundation of the capitalist mode of production, not only of its distribution. The fact tha t in the devel opment of the productive powers of labo ur the objective conditions of labour, objectified labour, must grow relative to living labour-this is actually a tautological state ment, for what else does growing productive power of labour mean than that less i m mediate labour is required to create a greater p ro d uct, and that therefore social wealth expresses itself more and more in the conditions of labour created by labour itself?-this fact appears from the standpoint of capital not in such a way that one of the moments of social activity-objective labour-becomes the ever more powerful body of the other moment, of subjective, living labour, but rather-and this is important for wage labour-that the objective conditions of labour assume an ever more colossal inde pendence, represented by its very extent, opposite living labour, and th a t social wealth confront labour in more powerful portions as an alien and dominant power. The emphasis comes to be placed not on the state of being objectified, but on the state of being alienated, dispossessed, sold [Der Ton wird gelegt nicht auf das Vergegenstandlichtsein, sondern das Entfremdet-, Entassert-, Veraussertsein] ; on the condition that the monstrous objective power which social labour itself erected opposite itself a s one of its moments belongs not t o the worker, but to the personified condi tions of production, i . e . to capital . To the extent that, from the standpoint of capital and wage labour, the creation of the objective body of activity happens in antithesis to the immediate labour capacity- th at this process of objectification in fact appears as a process of dispossession from the standpoint of labour or as appro priation of alien labour from the standpoint of capital-to that exten t, this twisting and inversion [Verdrehung und Verkehrung] is a real [phenomenon] , not a merely supposed one existing merely in the imagination of the workers and the capital ists. B ut obvi ously this p rocess of inversion is a merely historical necessity, a · necessity for the development of the forces of production solely 4. The sentence preceding t h i s one w a s inserted b y M a r x , a b o v e t h e l i n e , in English ; thus the apparent virtual rep-
etition. (The sentence f o l l o w i n g a l s o appears i n English in the original . )
The Grundrisse
293
from a specific h istoric point o f departure, or basis, but in no way an absolute necessity of production; rather, a ·vanishing one, and the result and the inherent purpose of this process is to suspend this basis itself, together with this form of the process . Th e bourgeois economists are so much cooped up within the notions belonging to a specific historic stage of social devel opment that the necessity of the objectification of the powers of social labour appears to them as inseparable from the necessity of their alienation vis-clovis living labour. B u t with the suspension of the immediate character of living labour, as merely individual, or as general merely internally or merely externally, with the positing of the activity of individ uals as immediately general or social activity, the objective moments of p ro duction are stripped of this form of alienation; they are thereby pos ited as property, as the organic social body within which the indi viduals reproduce themselves as ind ividuals, but as social individu als . The conditions which allow them to exist in this way in the reproduction of their life, in their productive life's process, have been posited only by the historic economic p rocess itself; both the objective and the subjective conditions, which are only the two dis tinct forms of the same conditions . The worker's propertyless ness, and the ownership of living labour by objectified labour, or the appropriation of alien labour by capital -both merely expressions of the same relation from opposite poles -are fundamental conditions of the bourgeois mode of production, in no way accidents irrelevant to i t . These modes of distribution are the relations of production themselves, but sub specie distributionis. It is therefore highly absurd when e . g . J . S. Mill says ( Principles of Political Economy, 2nd ed., London, 1 849, Vol . I, p. 2 40 ) : "The laws and conditions of the production of wealth partake o f the cha r acter of physical truths . . . It is not so with the distribution of wealth. Th a t is a matter of human institutions solely." ( p . 2 3 9, 2 40 . ) The "laws a n d conditions " o f the production of wealth and t h e laws of the 'distribution o f wealth' are the same l a w s u n d e r dif ferent form s , and both change, undergo the same h istoric p rocess; a re as such only moments of a historic process . It requires no great penetration to grasp that, where e . g . free labour or wage labour arising out of the dissolution of bondage is the point of departure, there machines can only arise in anti thesis to l iving labour, as property alien to it, and as power hostile to it; i.e. that they must confront i t as capital . B ut i t is just as easy to perceive that machines will not cease to be agencies o f social p ro duction when they become e.g. property of the associated workers . In the first case, however, their distribution, i.e. that they do not belong to the worker, is just as much a condition o f the m o de of production founded on wage labo ur. In the second case the changed distribution would s tart from a changed foundation of production, a new foundation first created by the process of history.
Capital, Volume One KARL MARX
Capital (Das Kapital )
was Marx's magnum opus, Volume One, published in
1 8 67, is the book generally referred to sim ply as
Capital
and i s relatively
complete in itself. The following selections from it, together with Marx's Preface to the first German edition, Afterword to the second, and Preface to the French edi tion, are taken from the text of the English edition o f 1 8 8 7 , as translated f ro m the third German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling and edited by Engels. An attempt has been made here to provide those seetions o f the book that collectively convey the basic argument and the most char acteristic themes. I n some instances Marx's footnotes have been deleted in the interest o f saving space.
Preface to the First German Edition The work, the first volume o f which I n ow s ubmit to the public, forms the continuation of my "Zur Kritik 'der Politischen Oekono m i e" (A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy ) pub l ished in 1 8 59 . The long pa use between the first part and the con tinuation is due to a n illness of many years' duration that again a n d a gain interrupted my w,!rk. The substance of that earlier work is summarised in the first three chapters of this vol u m e . This is done not merely for the sake of connexion and completeness. The presen tatioo of the �ub ject-matter is improve d . As hr as circuffistaiiwin any way permit, ,many pOints only hinted at in the earlier book are here worked out m ore fully, whilst, conversely, points worked out fully there are only touched upon in this volum e . The sections o n the history of the theories o f value and o f money are now, o f course, left out alto gether. The reader of the earlier work will find, however, in the no tes to the fi rs t chapter a dditional sources o f reference relative to the history of those theories. 29 4
Capital, Volume One
1;, ' Tha�inning is "
2 95
difficult holds in all sciences. To under
, st andthe first chapter, especially the section that contains the a y. al ysis of c o m m odities, w i l l , therefore, present the g reatest d ifficulty. That which concerns more especially the analysis of the substance of
v a l u e and the m a g n i t u d e o f value, I have, as much as it was p ossi ble, popularise d . ! The value-form, whose fully devel oped shape is
the money-form, i s very elementary a n d simple . Nevertheless, t h e
h u m a n m i n d h as f o r m o r e t h a n
o
2,000
years sought i n vain to g e t t o
t h e bo ttom o f it, whilst on the other h a n d , t o t h e successful a n a l y s i s o f m uch m o re c o m p o s i te a n d c o m p l e x forms, t h e r e has b e e n at
least an approximation . V/hy? B ecause the body, as an organic whole, is more easy o f study than are the cells o f that body. I n the analysis
o f economic forms, moreover, neither mic roscopes
nor
c h e m i c a l reagents are o f use . T h e force o f abstraction m u s t replace
both. But in bourgeois society the commodity-form of the product
o f labour-or the value-form o f the commodity-is the economic
cell-form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms
seems to turn upon minuti<£. I t does i n fact deal with m i n u t ia!,
but they are of the same order as those dealt with i n microscopic
anatomy.
\Vith the exception o f the section on value-form, therefore, this
volume cannot stand accused on the score o f difficulty. I p re
suppose, of course, a reader who is willing to learn something new
a n d therefore to think for himself.
Th e physicist either observes physical phenomena where they
occur i n their m o s t typical form and m ost free from disturbing
influence, or, wherever possible, he makes experiments under condi tions that assure the occurrence of the phenomenon in its normal i ty . In this work I have to examine the capitalist mode of produc- �
�
,L
ti on, and the conditIons of production and exchange COfrespon ng �� , t. Qtll a t mode. Up to the present t i m e , their classic ground is ng land . That is the reason why England is used as the chief illustra tion i n the development of my theoretical ideas. If, h owever, the German reader shrugs his shoulders a t the condition o f the English industrial and agricultural labourers, o r in optimist fashion , com forts himself with the thought that in Germany things are not
1 . T h i s i s t h e m o r e necessary, as e v e n t h e section o f Ferdinand Lassalle's work against Schulze-Delitzsch, in which he p r o f e s s e s to g i v e " t h e intel lectual Quintessence" o f m y explana tions on these subjects, contains impor tant m is t a k e s . I f Ferdinand Lassalle has borrowed almost literally from my w r i t i n g s , and without any acknowledge ment, all the general theoretical propo sitions in his economic works, e.g.,
t h o s e on t h e historical character o f capital, on the connexion between the conditions of production and the m o d e o f p ro d u c t i o n , & c . , & c . , even to t h e t e r minology created by m e , this may per h a p s b e d u e to p u r poses o f propaganda. I am here, o f course, n o t speaking of his detailed working o u t and applica tion o f these propositions, with which I have n o t h i n g to do.. [Mar%]
296
The Critique of Capitalism
nearly so bad; I must plainly tell him, "De te fabula narratur!"2 Intrinsically. it is not a q uestion o f the higher or lower degre e of dev opment o f the social antagonisms that result from the natu ial l..e�rorC:1plfiiI lst producti o�. I t is a question of these l aws 1fierri i sel ves, of tnese :endencies worki WI 1 necessl towar s mev� i"fabier esults . The coun try that is more eve ope mdustrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future . B u t apart from this. \Vhere capitalist production is fully natural ised among the Germans ( for instance, in the factories prope r ) the condition of things is much worse than in England, because the counterpoise of the Factory Acts is wanting. In all other spheres, we, like all the rest of Continental \Vestern E urope, suffer not only from the development of capitalist production, but also from the incompleteness of that development. Alongside of modern evils, a whole series of inherited evils oppress us, arising from the passive survival o f antiquated modes of production, with their inevitable train o f social and political anachronisms. We suffer not only from the living, but from the dea d . Le mort saisit le viff3 The social statistics o f Germany and the rest of Continental Western Europe are, in comparison with those of E ngland, wretchedly compile d . But they raise the veil j us t enough to let u s catch a glimpse of t h e Medusa h e a d behind it . We should b e appalled a t t h e state of things a t home, if, a s in England, o u r gov ernments and parliaments appointed periodically comm issions of inquiry i n t o economic conditions; if these commissions were armed with the same plenary powers to get at the truth; if it was possible to find for this purpose men as competent, as free f rom partisanship and respect of persons as are the English factory inspectors, her medical reporters on public health, her commission ers o f inquiry into the exploitation o f women and children, i n to h o using and foo d . Perseus wore a magic cap tha t the monsters he hunted down m i g h t not see h i m . W e d r a w t h e magic cap down over eyes and ears a s a make-believe that there are no monsters . Let us not deceive ourselves on this . As in the 1 8th century, the American war of independence soun ded the tocsin for the E u ro pean middle-class, so in the 1 9 th century, the American Civil War sounded i t for the E uropean working-class. In E ngland the progress of social disintegration is palpable. When it has reached a certain point, it must re-act on the Continent. There it will take a form more brutal or more h umane, according to the degree of develop ment of the working-class itself. Apart from h igher motives, there fore, their own most important interests dictate to the classes that
�
.
2.
This s t o r y is about you.
3. The dead man seizes the l i v i n g one.
�.
Capital, Volume One
2 97
are fo r the n o n ce the ruling ones, the removal of all legally remov
able hindrances t o the free development of the working-clas s . For
this reason, as well a s others, I have given so large a space i n this
volume to the history, the details, and the results of English factory
legislation . One nation can and should learn from other s . And even
when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the natural laws o f its movement-and it is the ultimate aim o f this
work, t o lay bare the economic law o f motion of modern socie ty-it can neither clear by b old leaps, nor remove by legal e nact
m ents, the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal
development. But it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs .
To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word . I paint the capi
talist and the landlord in no sense
couleuT de rose .
But here i n d i
viduals are dealt with only in so far as they are the personifications of
economic categories, embodiments of particular class-relations a n d
class-interests. M y standpoint, from which t h e evolution of t h e
economic formation o f society is viewed as a process of natural h is tory, can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature h e socially remains, however much he may
subjectively raise himself above them .
In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets
n o t merely the sam e enemies a s i n all other domains. The peculiar
nature o f the material i t deals with, summons as foes into the field
o f battle the m ost violent, mean and malignant passions o f the
human
breast,
the
Established Church,
Furies
e.g.,
of
private
interes t .
The
English
will more readi l y pardon a n attack on 3 8
o f its 3 9 articles than o n 1 1 39 o f its inco m e . Now-a-days at heism itself is
culpa levis,
as compa red with criticism of existing property
relation s. Nevertheless, there is an unmistakable advance. I refer,
e .g.,
to the B l u e book published within the last few weeks : " Corre
spondence with He� M a j esty's Missions A broad, regarding I n dustrial
Questions a n d Trades' Unions ." The representatives o f t h e Engl ish
Crown in foreign countries there declare in so many words that in
Germany, in F rance, to be brief, in all the civil ised states of the
E u ropean C ontinent, a radical change in
the existing relations
between capital a n d labour i s as evident and inevitable a s i n
Eng
land . At the s a m e time, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean,
M r . \Vade, vice-president o f the United States,'" declared in public 4.
M a r x w a s inaccurate h e r e , although for an easily understandable reason. The vice presidency became vacant when Vice President And rew Johnson succeeded to the presidency upon Lin coln's assassination in 1 8 6 5 . In 1 8 6 7 Senator Benjamin F . W a d e o f Ohio
was elected president pro tem o f the Senate. H e thereby became first i n line of succession to the presidency during the Johnson administration a n d in this sense was the equivalent o f a v i c e presi dent although he did n o t in fact occupy that office. [R . T.]
298
The Critique of Capitalism
meetings that, after the abolition of slavery, a radical change of t he relations of capital and of property in land is next upon the o rde r of the day. These are signs of the times, not to be h i dden by purple mantles or black cassocks. They do not signify that tomorrow a miracle will happe n . They s how that, within the ruling-clas ses themselves, a foreboding is dawning, that the present society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and is constantly changing. The second volume o f this work will treat o f the process o f the circulation of capital ( B ook 1 1. ) , and of the varied forms assumed by capital in the course of its development (B ook I I I . ) , the third and last volume ( B ook I V . ) , the history o f the theory. Every opinion based on scientific criticism I welcome . 1\s to the prejudices of so-called public opinion, to which I have never made concessions, now as aforetime the maxim of the great Florentine is mme :
"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti."5 London, July 2 5 ,
1 86 7
Karl Marx ..
Preface to the French E d ition To the citizen Maurice LacMtre Dear Citizen, I applaud your idea of publishing the translation of "Das Kapi tal" as a serial. In this form the book will be more accessible to the working-class, a consideration which to me outweighs everything els e . T h a t is t h e g o o d s i d e of y o u r suggestion, b u t h e re is t h e reverse of the medal : the method of analysis which I have employed, and which ha d not previously been applied to economic s ubjects, makes the reading of the first chapters rather arduous, and it is to be feared that the French public, always impatient to come to a conclusion, eager to know the connexion between general principles and the immediate questions that have aroused their passions, may be dis heartened because they will be unable to move on at once. That is a disadvantage I am powerless to overcome, unless i t be by forewarning and forearming those readers who zealously seek the 5. "Follow your own c o u r s e , n o matter w h a t people say."
Capital, Volume One
2 99
,·! truth . There is no royal road to science, and only those who do n o t
; dread the fatiguing c l i m b of i t s s t e e p paths have a chance o f gain
,: in g its l uminous summits.
Believe me,
. London, March
dear citizen
Your devoted,
1 8, 1 872
Karl Marx
From the Afterword to the Second German Edition T h a t the method employed in " D a s Kapital" has been little
understood, is shown by the various conceptions, contradictory one to another, that have been formed o f i t . Thus the Paris
one hand,
Revue Positiviste
I treat economics
reproaches me in t h a t , on the
metaphysically, and o n the other
hand-imagine ! -confine myself to the mere critical analysis of actual facts, instead o f writing receipts ( Comtist ones ? ) cook-shops of the f u t u r e . In answer to the reproach
in re
for the
metaphys
ics, Professor Sieber h a s it : "In so far as i t deals with actual theory,
the method o f Marx i s the deductive method o f the whole English
school, a school whose failings and virtues are common to the best
theoretic economists . " M. BIock-"Les Theoriciens d u Socialisme
en Allemagne. Extrait d u Journal des Economistes, Juillet e t Aout 1 8 7 2 "-makes the discovery th a t m y method i s analytic a n d says :
"Par cet ouvrage 1\1 Marx se classe parmi les esprits analytiques les
plus eminents . " 6 German reviews, o f course, shriek out a t "H ege lian sophistics . " The
European Messenger
of St. Petersburg in an
article dealing exclusively with the method of "Das Kapital" ( May
number,
1 87 2 ,
pp.
4 27-4 3 6 ) ,
finds my method of inquiry severely
realistic, but m y method of presentation, unfortunately, German
dialectica l . It says : "At first sight, i f the judgment is based
on
the
external form of the presentation of the subject, Marx is the most
i d e a l of i d e a l philosophers, always in the German, i.e., the bad sen s e of the word. But in point of fact he is infinitely m or e realistic than all his fore-runners in the work o f economic criticism . He can i n n o sense be called an idealist . " I cannot answer the writer better
than by aid of a few extracts from h is own criticism, which may
interest some o f m y readers to whom the Russian original is inac
cessi ble .
6. "With this work M a r x takes his place among the most eminent analytic m i n d s . "
3 00
The Critique of Capitalism
After a quotation from the preface to my "C riticism of Politica l Economy, " Berlin, 1 8 59, pp . IV-VI I, where I discuss the materi alistic basis of m y method, the writer goes on : "The one thing which is of moment to Marx, is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned; and not only is that law of moment to him, which governs these phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and mutual connexion within a given his torical period. Of still greater moment to him is the law of their variation, o f their development, i .e . , of their transition from one form into another, from one series of connexions into a different one. This law once discovered, he investigates in detail the effects in which it manifests itself in social l ife . Consequently, Marx only troubles himself about one thing : to show, b y rigid scientific inves tigation, the n e cessity of successive determinate orders o f social conditions, and to establish, as impartially as possible, the facts that serve him for fundamental starting-points . For this it is quite enough, if he proves, at the same time, both the necessity of the present order of things, and the necessity of another order into which the first must inevitably pass oyer, and this all the same, whether men believe or do not believe it, whether they are con scious or unconscious of it. Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intel ligence, but rather, on the con trary, determining that will, consciousness and in telligence . . . . If in the history of civilisation the conscious element plays a part so subordinate, then it is self-evident that a critical inquiry whose sub j ect-matter is civilisation, can, less than anything else, have for its basis any form of, or any result of, consciousness . That is to say, that not the idea, but the material phenomenon alone can serve as its starting-poi n t . Such an inquiry will confine itself to the confron tation and the comparison of a fact, not with ideas, but with another fact . For this inquiry, the one thing of moment is, that both facts be investigated as accurately as possible, and that they actually form, each with respect to the other, different momenta of a n evolution; but most importa n t o f all is the rigid analysis o f the series o f success ions, of the sequences and concatenations i n which the different stages of such an evolution present themselves . But it will be said, the general laws of economic l i fe are one and the same, no matter whether they are applied to the present or the past. This Marx directly denie s . According to h i m , such abstract laws do not exist. O n the contrary, in his opinion every historical period has laws of its own . . . . As soon as society has outlived a given period of development, a n d is p assing over from one given stage to another, it begins to b e s ubject also to other laws. In a word, economic life offers us a phenomenon a n alogous to the h is-
Capital, Volume One
301
tory of evolution i n other branches of biology. The old economists
misunderstood the nature of economic laws when they likened
them to the laws of physics and chemistry.
A
m o re thorough analy
sis of phenomena shows that social organisms differ among them
selves a s fundamentally as plants or a n i m al s. Nay, one a n d the same
phenomenon falls under quite different laws i n consequence o f the different structure of those organisms as a whole, of the variations
of their individual organs, of the different conditions in which those organs function, &c. Marx, e .g . , denies tha t the law of popula tion is the same a t all times a n d in all place s . He asserts, on the
contrary, that every stage of development has its own law of popu lation . . . . \Vith the varying degree of development of productive
power, social conditions and the laws governing them vary too . \Vhilst Marx sets himself the task of following and explaining from
this p oint of view the economic system established by the sway of
capital, h e is only formulating, in a strictly scientific manner, the aim that every accurate investigation into economic l i fe must h a v e .
T h e scien tific va l ue of such an inquiry lies in t h e discl osing o f the
special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development, death
of a given socia l organism a n d its replacement by another and
higher one. A n d i t i s this value that, in point o f fact, Marx's book
has . "
\Vhilst t h e writer p i ctures w h a t h e takes t o be actually m y
method, in t h i s striking a n d [ a s f a r as concerns m y o w n application
of it] generous way, what else i s h e picturing but the dialectic
method?
Of course the met hod of presentation m ust differ i n form from
tha t of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the . material i n detail,
to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connexion. Only after this work i s done, can the actual move
ment be adequately describ e d . I f this i s done successfully, if the l ife
of the subject-matter i s ideally reflected as i n a mirror, then i t may
appear a s i f we h a d before us a mere a priori construction.
My dialectic method i s n o t only d ifferent from the Hegelian, but
i s its direct opposite . To Hegel, the life-process o f the human brain,
i.e.,
the process o f thinking, which, under the name of "the I dea,"
he even transforms into a n independent subject, is t h e demiurgos
of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenome
nal form of " th e I dea . " With me , on the con trary, the ideal i s
n o t h i n g e l s e t h a n t h e material w o r l d reflected by t h e human m i n d , and translated into forms of thought.
The mystifying si de of Hegelian d i a l ectic
I
criticised nearly thirty
years ago, a t a t i m e when i t was still the fashi o n . B u t just a s I was working a t the first volume of "D as Kapital," i t was the good pleas
ure o f the peevish, arrogant, mediocre epigones who now talk large
302
The Critique of Capitalism
in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in the same way as the bra ve Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing's time treated Spinoza, i . e ., as a "dead dog ." I therefore openly avowed myself the p upil of that mighty thinker, a n d even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted- with the modes of expression peculiar to h i m . The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hege l ' s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to p resent its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious m a n n e r . 'Vith him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shel l . In its mystified form, dialectic became t h e fashion i n Germany, because i t seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things . In its r a tional form it is a scandal and a bomination to bour geoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes i n its comprehension a n affirmative recognition of the existing state of th i ngs, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every his torically developec,l social form as in fluid movement, a n d therefore takes into account its transient nature n o t less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, an d is in its essence critical and revolutionary. The contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist society impress themselves upon the practical bourgeois most strikingly in the changes of the periodic cycle, through which modem industry runs, and whose crowning point is the universal crisis. That crisis is once again approaching, although as yet but in its preliminary stage; and by the universality of its theatre and the intensity o f its action i t will drum dialectics even into the heads of the mush room-upstarts of the new, holy Prusso-German empire. London, January 2 4 ,
1 873
Karl Marx
Part I . Commodities and l\'i oney CHAPTER I. COl\1 MODITIES
Section 1 . The Two Factors of a Commodity: Use-Value and Value (The Substance of Value and the Magnitude of Value) The wealth of those societies . i n which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as "an immense accumulation of
Capital, Volume One
3 03
. commodities, " ! its unit being a single commodity. Our investiga tion m u s t therefore begin with the anal ysis of a commodity.
A c o m m odity is, i n the first place, a n ob ject outside us, a thing
that by its properties satisfies human wants o f some sort or another.
The nature o f such w a n t s, whether, for instance, t h e y spring from
the stomach or from fancy, makes n o d i fferenc e . 2 Neither are we
here concerned to know how the object satisfies these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means o f product ion .
Every useful thing, as iron, paper, &c . , may be looked at from the
two points of view of quality and quantity. It is an assemblage of many properties, and may therefore be o f use in various ways . To
discover the various uses of things is the work of history.3 So also is
the establishment of socially-recognised standards of measure for
. the quantities o f these useful objects . The diversity o f these meas
ures has its origin partly in the diverse nature of the objects to b e
measured, partly i n convention.
The utility o f a thing makes it a use-valu e . 4 B ut this utility is
not a thing o f a i r . Being l i mited by the physical properties o f the commodity, i t has n o existence apart from th a t commodity.
A
com
modity, such as iron, corn, o r a d i a m o n d, i s therefore, so far as it is
a material thing, a us e-value, something useful . This property of a
commodity is independent of the a m ount of labour required to
appropriate its useful qualities. \Vhen treating of use-value, we
always assume to be dealing with definite quantities, such as dozens
of watches, yards of l i nen, o r tons . of iron . The use-values of com
modities furnish the material for a specia l study, that o f the com
mercial knowledge o f commodities . 5 Use-values become a reality only by use o r consumption : they also constitute the substance of
all wealth, whatever may be the social form of that wealth . In the
1. Karl M a r x , " Z u r Kritik der P o l i t i s c h e n Oekonomie." B e rli n , 1 8 5 9 , p . 3 . [Marx]
2 . "Desire implies wan t ; i t i s the appe tite of the mind, and as natural as hunger to the b o d y . . . . The greatest n u m be r (of things) have their value from supplying the wants of the mind." Nicholas Barbon : " A Discourse Concerning Coining the New Money Lighter. I n Answer to Mr. Locke's Considerations," &c., London, 1 69 6 , p p . 2 , 3 . [Marx] 3. "Things have a n intrinsick vertue" (this i s Barbon's special term for value i n use) "which i n all places have the same v e r tu e ; as the loadstone to at tract iron" (I. c . , p. 6 ) . The property which the magnet possesses of attract i n g iron, became o f use only after by means of that property the polarity of
the
magnet
[Marx]
had
been
discovered.
4. "The natural worth of anything con sists in its fitness to supply the necessi ties, o r serve the conveniences of h u m a n l i f e . " ( J o h n L o c k e , " S o m e Con siderations o n the Consequences o f the Lowering o f Interest, 1 6 9 1 , " i n W.o r k s . E d i t . Lond . , 1 7 7 7 , V ol . II., p. 2 8 . ) In English writers o f t h e 1 7 th century w e fI-equentIy fi n d "worth" i n the s e n s e o f value i n use, and " v a l ue " i n the sense o f exchange-value. This is quite i n ac cordance ·with the spirit of a language that likes to use a Teutonic w o r d for the actual thing, and a Romance word f o r its reftexion . [Marx] 5. In bourgeois societies the economic fictio juris prevails, that every o n e , as a buyer, possesses an encyclopaedic knowledge of commodities. [Marx]
3 04
The Critique of Capitalism
form of society we are about to consider, they are, in addition, the material depositories of exchange-value. Exchange-value, at first sight, presents itself a s a quantitative relation, as the proportion in which values in use of one sort are exchanged for those of another sort, 6 a relation constantly chang ing with time and place. Hence exchange-value appears to be something accidental and purely relative, and consequently an intrinsic value, i.e., a n exchange-value that is inseparably connected with, inherent in commodities, seems a contradiction in term s . 7 Let us consider the matter a little more closely. A given commodity, e .g., a quarter of wheat is exchanged for x blacking, y silk, or z gold, &c.-in short, for other commodities in the most different proportions . Instead of one exchange- value, the wheat has, therefore, a great many. But since x blacking, y silk, or z gold, &c . , each represent the exchange-value of one quarter of wheat, x blacking, y silk, z gold, &c . , must, as exchange-va lues, be replaceable by each other, or equal to each oth e r . Therefore, first : the valid exchange-values of a given commodity express something equal; secondly, exchange-value, generally, is only the mode of expression, the phenomenal form, of something contained in it, yet distinguishable from i t . Let us take t w o commodities, e.g., corn and iron . The propor tions in which they are exchangeable, whatever those proportions may be, can always b e represented by an equation in which a given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of iron : e .g . , I quarter corn = x cwt. iron . What does this equation tell us? It tells us that in two different things-in I quarter of corn and x cwt. of iron, there exists in equal quantities something common to both. The two things must therefore be equal to a third, which in itself is nei ther the one nor the other. Each of them, so far as it is exchange value, must therefore be reducible to this third . A simple geometrical illustration will make this clear.. In order to calculate and compare the areas of rectilinear figures, we decompose them into triangles. But the area o f the triangle itself is exp ressed by something totally different from its visible figure, namely, by half the product of the base into the altitude. In the same way the exchange-values of commodities m u s t be capable of being expressed in terms of something common to them all, of which thing they represent a greater or less quantity. This common "something" cannot be either a geometrical, a chemical, or any other natural p roperty of commoditie s . Such p rop6. "La valeur consiste dans Ie rapport d'echange qui se trouve entre telle chose e t telle autre, entre telle mesure d'une production, e t telle mesure d'une autre." (Le Tros il e : "De l'Interet So c i a l . " Physiocrates, Ed. D a i r e . P a r i s , 1 8 4 6 . P . 8 8 9 . ) [MaTx]
7. "Nothing can have a n i n t r i n s i c k value." ( N . Barbon, 1. c . , p . 6 ) ; o r a s B u t l e r says"The valu e of a thing is just as much as i t will b r i n g . "
[MaTx]
Capital, Volume One
3 05
erties claim our attention only in so far as they affect the u t i l i ty o f
those commodities, make them use-values . B u t the exchange o f commodities is evidently an a c t characterised by a total abstraction
from use-val ue. Then one use-value i s just as good a s another, pro
vide d only it b e present in sufficient quantity. Or, as old Barbon
s ays, "one sort of wares are as good as another, i f the values be
equal . There is no d ifference o r distinction i n things of equal value .
. . . An h u n d r e d pounds' worth of lead or iron, is of as great value a s one hundred p ounds' worth of silver or gol d . " As use-values, commodities are, above all, o f d ifferent qualities, but a s exchange
,·alues they are merely different quantities, and consequently do n o t c o n t a i n an a t o m of use-value .
If then we leave out of consideration the use-value of commodi
ties, they have only one common property left, that of being prod ucts of lab o u r . But even the product of labour itself has undergone
a change in our hand s . I f w e make abstraction from its use-value, we make abstraction a t the same time from the material elements
and shapes that make the product a use-v alue; we see in i t no longer
a
table, a house, yarn, or any other useful thing. Its existence
a s a material thing is put out o f sigh t . Neither can it any longer be
regarded a s the product of the labour of the j o iner, the m ason, the spinner, or of any other definite kind o f productive labour. Along
with the useful qualities o f the products themselves, we put out of
sight both the
useful
character o f the various
kinds of labour
embodied in them, a n d the concrete forms o f that labour; there is
nothing left b u t what is common to them a l l ; all · are reduced t o one and t h e s a m e sort o f labour, h u m a n labour in the abstract. Let us n o w consider the residue o f each o f these products; it con
sists o f the same u nsubstantial reality in each, a mere congelation
of homogeneous human labour, of labour-power expended without
regard to the mode o f its expenditure. All that these things now
tell us is, t h a t human labour-power has been expended i n their
production, that human labour is embodied in them . When looked
a t as crystals of this social substance, common t o them ali, they are
-Val ues .
\Ve have seen
tha t when commodities are
exchanged,
their
exchange-value m a n i fests itself as something totally independent of
their use-value. But if we abstract from their use-value, there remains their Value as defined above . Therefore, the common subc
stance that manifests itself in the exchange- v alue o f commodities,
whenever they are exchanged, is their val u e . T h e p rogress o f our investigation will show that exchange-value is the o n l y form in
which the value o f commodities can manifest itself o r b e expressed . For the present, h owever, we have to consider the nature of value
independently o f t h i s, its form .
A use-value, or u s e ful article, therefore, has value only because
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The Critique o f Capitalism
h u ma n labour in the a bstract has been embodied or materialised in it. How, then, is the magnitude o f this value to be measured? Plainly, by the quantity af the value-creating substance, the labour, contained in the article. The quantity of labour, however, is m eas ured by its duration, and labour-time in its turn finds its standard i n weeks, days, and hours . Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the q uantity of labour spen t on it, the m o re idle and unskillful the labourer, the more valuable would h i s comm odity be, because more time would be required in its p roductio n . The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, i s homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour-power . The total labour-power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass' o f human labour-power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units . Each of these units is the same as any other, so far as it has the character of the average labour-power o f society, and takes effect as such; that is, so far as it requires. for producing a commodity , n o more time than i s needed on an average, n o more than is socially necessary. The labour-time socially necessary is that required to produce a n article under the n ormal condition s of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time. The introduction o f power looms into England probably reduced by one-half the labour required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth . The hand loom weavers, as a matter of fact, continued to require the same time as before; but for all that, t h e product o f one hour of their labour represented after the change only haH an hour's social labour, and consequently fell to one-h al f its former value. We see then tha t that which determines the magnitude of the value of any article is the amount of labour socially necessary, or the labour-time socially necessary for its production .S E a ch individ ual commodity, in this connexion, is to b e considered as an average sample of its cla s s , 9 Commodities, therefore, in which equal quan tities of labour are embodied, or which can be produced in the same time, have the same value. The value of one commodity is to the value o f any other, as the labour-time necessary for the produc tion of the one is to that necessary for the production of the other. 8. " T h e value of t h e m ( the necessaries o f l i f e ) , when they are exchanged the one for another, i s regulated by the quantity of labour necessarily required and commonly taken in producing them." ( " Some Thoughts o n the Inter e s t o f Money i n General, and Particu larly in the Publick Funds, &c. " Lond., p . 3 6 . ) This remarkable anonymous work, written in the last century, bears
no date. It is clear, however, from in ternal evidence, that i t appeared in the reign of George II. about 1 7 3 9 or 1 7 4 0 .
[Marx]
9. "Toutes les productions d'un me me genre ne forment proprement qu'une masse, d o n t I e p r i x s e determine en general et sans egard aux circonstances particul ieres." (Le Trosne , 1. c., p . 8 9 3 . ) [Marx]
Capita l, Volum e One
3 07
"As values, all commodities are only definite masses of congeale d labour-time." The value of a commodity would therefore remain constant, if the labour-time required for its production also remained constant. But the latter changes with every variation in the productiveness of labour. This productiveness is determined by various cicumstances, amongst others, by the average amount of skill of the workmen, the state of science, and the degree of its practical application, the social organisation of production, the extent and capabilities of the means of production, and by physical conditions . For example, the same amount of labour in -favourable seasons is embodied in 8 bushels of corn, and in unfavourable, only in four. The same labour extracts from rich mines more metal than from poor mines . Dia monds are of very rare occurrence on the earth's surface, and he.nce their discovery costs, on an average, a great deal of labour-time. Consequently much labour is represented in a small compass. Jacob doubts whether gold has ever been paid for at its full value. This applies still more to diamonds. According to Eschwege, the total produce of the Brazilian diamond mines for the eighty years, ending in 1 8 2 3 , had not realised the price of one-and-a-half years' average produce O'f the sugar and coffee plantations of the same country, although the diamonds cost much more labour, and there fore represented more value. \\lith richer mines, the same quantity of labour would embody itself in more diamonds, and their value would fall . If we could succeed at a small expenditure of labour, in converting carbon into diamonds, their value might fall below that of bricks . In general, the greater the productiveness of labour, the less is the labour-time required for the production of an article, the less is the amount of labour crystallised in that article, and the less is its value; and vice versa, the less the productiveness of labour, the greater is the labour-time required 'for the production of an article, and the greater is its value. The value of a commodity, therefore, varies directly as the quantity , and inversely as the pro ductiveness, of the labour incorporated in it. A thing ca n be a use-value, without having value. This is the case whenever its utility to man is not due to labour. Such are air, virgin soil, natural meadows, &c. A thing can be useful, and the product of human labour, without being a commodity. vVhoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own labour, creates, indeed, use-values, but no commodities. In order to produce the latter, he must not only produce' use-values, but use-values for others, social use-values . ( And not only for others, without more. The medireval peasant produced quit-rent-com for his feudal lord and tithe-corn for his parson. But neither the quit-rent-corn nor the tithe-corn became commodities by reason of the fact that they had
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T h e Critique of Capitalism
been produced for others . To become a commodity a product must be transferred to another, whom it will serve as a use-value, by means of an exchange . ) 1 Lastly nothing can have val ue, withou t being an object of utility. I f the thing is useles s, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.
Section
2.
The Two-fold Character of the Labour Embodied In Commodities
At first sight a commodity presented itself to us as a complex of two things-use-value and exchange-value . Later on, we saw also that labour, too, possesses the same two-fold nature; for, so far as it finds expression in value, it does not possess the same characteris tics that belong to it as a creator of use-values. I was the first to point out and to examine critically this two-fold nature of the labour contained in commodities . As this point is the pivot on which a clear comprehension of Political Economy turns, we m ust go more into detail. Let us take two commodities such as a coat and 1 0 yards of linen, and let the former be double the value of the latter, so that, if 1 0 yards of linen = \V, the coat = 2W . The coat i s a use-value that satisfies a particular want. I ts exist ence is the result of a special sort of productive activity, the nature o f which is determined by its aim, mode of operation, subject, means, and result. The labour, whose utility is thus represented by the value in use of its product, or which manifests itself by making its product a use-value, we call useful labour. In this connexion we consider only its useful effect . As the coat and the linen are two qualitatively different use values, so also are the two forms of labour that produce them, tai loring and weaving. Were these two objects not qualitatively differ rent, not produced respectively by labour o f different quality, they could not stand to each other in the relation of commodities. Coats are not exchanged for coats, one use-value is not exchanged for another of the same k in d . T o all the different varieties o f values i n lise there correspond a s m a n y different kinds o f useful labour, classified according t o the order, genus, species, and variety to which they belong in the social division of labour. This division of labour is a necessary condition for the production of commodities, but i t does not follow, con versely, that the production of commodities is a necessary condition for the division of labour. In the primitive Indian co mmunity there 1 . I am i n s e r t i n g the parenthesis be c a u s e i t s omission has often g i v e n r i s e to the m isunderstanding that every product that i s consumed by some o n e
other t h a n i t s producer i s considered i n M a r x a commodity. [Engels, 4th Ger man
edition 1
Capital, Volume One
3 09
is social division of labour, without production of commodities. Or, to take an example nearer home, in every factory the labour is divided according to a system, but this division is not brought about by the operatives mutually exchanging their individual prod ucts . Only s uch products can become commodities with regard to each other, as result from different kinds o f labour, each kind being carried on independently and for the account o f private individuals . To resume, then : In the use-value of each commodity there is contained useful labour, i.e., productive activity of a definite kind and exercised with a definite aim. U se-values cannot confront each other as commodities , unless the useful labour embodied in them is qualitatively different in each of them . In a communi ty, the pro duce of which in general takes the form of commodities, i.e., in a community of commodity producers, this qualitative difference between the useful forms of labour that are carried on independ ently by individual producers, each on their own account, develops into a complex system , a social division of labo u r. Anyhow, whether the coat be w o r n by the tailor or by his cus tomer, in either case it operates as a use-val ue. Nor is the relation between the coat and the labour th a t produced it altered by the cir cumstance that tailoring may h ave become a special trade, a n inde pendent branch of the social division of labo u r . \Vherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the human race made clothes for thousands o f years, without a single man becoming a tailor. B ut coats and linen, like every other element of material wealth that is not the spontaneous produce o f Nature, m us t invariably owe their existence to a special productive activity, exercised with a definite aim, a n activity that appropriates particular nat ure-given materials to p a rticular human wants . So far therefore as labour is a creator of use-value, is useful labour, it is a necessary condition, independent of all forms of society, for the existence of the human race; it is an eternal nature-imposed necessity, without which there can b e no material exchanges between man and Nature, and therefore n o life. The use-values, coat, linen, &c., i.e., the bodies o f commodities, are combinations of two elements-matter and labo u r . If we take away the useful labour expended upon them, a material substratum is always left, which is furnished by Nature without the help of man. The latter can work only as Nature does, that is by changi ng the form of matter. Nay more, in this work of changing the form he is constantly helped by natural forces. We see, then, that labour is not the only source o f material wealth, o f use-values produced by labour. As \Villiam Petty puts it, labour is its father and the earth its mother. Let us now pass from the commodity considered as a use-value to the value of commodities. By our assumption, t h e coat is worth twice as much as the line n .
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The Critique of Capitalism
But this is a mere quantitative difference, which for the present does not concern us. We bear in mind, however, that if the val ue of the coat is double that of 10 yds. of linen, 2 0 yds. of linen must have the same value as one coat. So far as they are values, the coat and the linen are things of a like substance, objective expressions of essentially identical labour. But tailoring and weaving are, qualita tively, different kinds of labour. There are, however,
states of
society in which one and the same man does tailoring and weaving alternately, in which case these two forms of labour are mere modi fications of the labour of the same individual, and no special and fixed functions of different persons; just as the coat which our tailor makes one day, and the trousers which he makes another day, imply only a variation in the labour of one and the same individ ual. :Moreover, we see at a glance that, in our capitalist society, a given portion of h uman labour is, in accordance with the varying demand, at one time supplied in the form of tailoring, at another in the form
of weaving. This change may possibly not take place with
out friction, but take place it must. Productive activity, if we leave out of sight its special form, viz., the useful character of the labour, is nothing but the expenditure of human labour-power. Tailoring and weaving, though qualita tively different productive activities, are each a productivle expendi ture of hllman brains, nerves, and muscles, and in this sense are human labour. They are but two different modes of expending human labour-power. Of course, this labour-power, which remains the same under all its modifications, must have attained a certain pitch of development before it can be expended in a multiplicity of modes. But the value of a commodity represents human labour in the abstract, the expenditure of human labour in general. And just as in society, a general or a banker plays a great part, but mere man, on the other hand, a very shabby part,2 so here with human labour. It is the expenditure of simple labour-power, i.e., of the labour-power which, on an average, apart from any special develop ment, exists in the organism of every ordinary individual. Simple average labour, it is true, varies in character in different countries and at different times, but in a particular society it is given. Skilled labour counts only as simple labour intensified, or rather, as multi plied simple labour, a given quantity of skilled being considered equal to a greater quantity of simple labour. Experience shows that this reduction is constantly being made. A commodity may be the product of the most skilled labour, but its value, by equating it to the product of simple unskilled labour, represents a definite quan tity of the latter labour alone.3 The different proportions in which 2. Compo Hegel, "Philosophie des Rechts ." Berlin, 1 840. P. 250, § 190. [Marx]
Capital, Volume One
1;
311
different sorts of labour are reduced to unskilled labour as their
. standard, are established by a social process that goes on behind the : backs of the producers, and, consequently, appear to be fixed by custom. For simplicity's sake we shall h enceforth account every kind of labour to be unskilled, simple labour; by this we do no more than save ourselves the trouble of making the reduction. Just as, therefore, in viewing the coat and linen as values, we abstract from their different use-values, so it is with the labour represented by those values: we disregard the difference between its useful forms, weaving and tailoring. As the use-values, coat and linen, are combinations of special productive activities with cloth and yarn, while the values, coat and linen, are, on the other hand, mere homogeneous congelations of undifferentiated labour, so the labour embodied in these latter values does not count by virtue of its productive relation to cloth and yarn, but only as being expendi ture of human labour-power. Tailoring and weaving are necessary factors in the creation of the use-values, coat and linen, precisely because these two kinds of labour are of different qualities; but only in so far as abstraction is made from their special qualities, only in so far as both possess the same quality of being human labour, do tailoring and weaving form the substance of the values of the same article. Coats and linen, however, are not merely values, but values of definite magnitude, and according to our assumption, the coat is worth twice as much as the ten yards of linen. Whence this differ ence in their values? It is owing to the fact that the linen contains only half as much labour as the coat, and consequently, that in the production of the latter, labour-power must have been expended during twice the time necessary for the production of the former. ' While, therefore, with reference to use-value, the labour con tained in a commodity counts only qualitatively, with reference to value it counts only quantitatively, and must first be reduced to human labour pure and simple. In the former case, it is a question of How and What, in the latter of How much? How long a time? Since the magnitude of the value of a commodity represents only the quantity of labour embodied in it, it follows that all commodi ties, when taken in certain proportions, must be equal in value. If the productive power of all the different sorts of useful labour required for the production of a coat remains unchanged, the sum of the values of the coats produced increases with their number. I f o n e coat represents x days' labour, two coats represent 2 X days' 3. The reader must note that we are not speaking here of the wages or value that the labourer gets f or a given labour-time, but of the value of the
commodity in which that labour-time is materialised. Wages is a category that, as y et, has no existence at the present stage of our investigation. [Mar:t]
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The Critique of Capitalism
labour, and so on. B u t assume that the duration of the labour necessary for the production of a coat becomes doubled or halved.
I n t he fi r s t c a s e , one c o a t is worth a s m u c h a s t w o c o a t s were
before; in the second case, two coats are only worth as m u ch as one was before, although in both cases one coat renders the s a m e serv
ice as before, a n d the useful labour embodied in it remains of the
same quality. B u t the quantity of labour spent on its production
h a s al tered. A n increase in t h e quantity o f use-val ues is an incre ase of m ate
rial wealth. With two coats two men can be clothed, with one coat only one m a n . Nevertheless, an increased quantity of material
wealth may correspond to a simultaneous fall in the magnitude of i ts value. This antagonistic movement has its origin in the two-fold
character o f labo u r . Productive power has reference, of course, only
to labour o f some useful concrete form, the efficacy of any special
productive activity during a given time being dependent o n its productiveness . Useful labour becom e s, therefore, a more or less
abundant source o f products, i n proportion to the rise or fall o f its productiveness . On the other hand, n o change in this productive
n e s s affects the labour represented by val ue. Since productive power
is an attribute o f the concrete useful forms of labour, of course it
can no l onger have any bea r i n g on that l a b o u r , so s o on a s we m ake abstraction from those concrete useful form s . However then pra.. ductive power ma,y vary, the s a m e labour, exercised during equal
periods o f tim e , always yields equal a m ounts o f val u e . But it" will yield, during equal periods o f time, different quantities o f values in use; more, if the productive power rise, fewer, if i t fal l . The s a m e
c h a n g e in productive power, w h i c h increases the fruitfulness of labour, and, in conseq uence, the quantity of use-values produced by that labour, will d i minish the total value of this increased quality
of use-values, provided such change shorten the total labour-time necessary for their production; a n d On
the one
hand
all
labour
vice versa. is,
speaking physio i ogically,
an
expenditure o f h u m a n labour-power, a n d i n i t s character of identi cal abstract human labour, it creates a n d forms the v a l u e of c o m modities . On
the
other h a n d , a l l labour is
the expend iture of
human labour-power in a special form and with a definite a i m , a n d
i n t h i s , i t s character o f concrete useful l a b o u r , i t p r o d u c e s u se
values .
r
��
Section
3·
The Form of Value
or
Exchange-Value
Commodities come into the world in the shape of use-va l ues,
articles, o r goods, such a s iron, linen, corn, &c. This i s their p l a i n ,
homely, b o d i l y form . They are, however, com modities, only b e c a u s e
Capital, Volume One
313
they are something two-fold, both objects of utility, and, at the
same time, depositories o f val ue . They m a n ifest themselves there fore a s c o m modities, or have the form of commodities, only in so far a s they h ave two forms, a physical or natural form and a value form . The reality of the value of com m o dities differs in this respect
from Dame
Q uickly,
that we don't know "where to have it." The
va lue o f com m o dities .is the very opposite o f the coarse materiality
of their substance, not an atom o f matter enters into its composi
tion. Turn and examine a single commodity, by itself, as we w i l l , v e t in so far as i t remains an o b j e c t of value, i t s e e m s impossible to
g rasp
it. I f, however, we bear in mind that the value of commodi
ties has a purely social reality, and that they acquire this reality
only in so far a s they are expressions o r embodiments o f one identi
cal social substance, viz., human labour, it follows as a matter of
cours e , tha t value can only manifest itself i n the social relation of commodity to commodity. In fact we started from exchange-v a l ue,
or the exchange relation of com modities, in order to get at the va lue that l ies hidden behind it. We m us t now return t o this -form
under which value first appeared to us .
Every one knows, if he knows nothing else, that commodities
have a value-form common to them all, a n d presenting a ma rked
contrast with the varied b o d i l y forms of their use -values . I m e a n t h e i r money-form . Here, however, a t a s k i s set us, t h e performance o f which has never yet even been attempted by
bourgeois
economy,
t h e task o f tracing the genesis o f this money-form, o f developing
the expression of value implied in the value-relation of c om m od i
ties, from its simplest, a l most i m perceptible outline, to the dazzling
money-form. B y doing this we shall, a t the same time, solve the
riddle presented by money.
The simplest value-relation is evidently t h a t of one c om modity
to some one other comm odity o f a different k in d . Hence the rela
tion between the values of two commod i ties supplies us with the
simplest expression o f the value of a single com modity.
A. ELEMENTARY OR ACCIDENTAL FORM OF VALUE
x c o m m o d i ty A
=
y c ommodity B, or
x commodity A is worth y commodity B. 20 yards o f l inen
= 1
coat, o r
2 0 yards o f linen a r e worth 1.
1
coat .
The Two Poles of the Expression of Value: Relative Form and Equivale nt Form The ' whole mystery of the form of value lies hidden in this ele
mentary form. I ts analysis, therefore, is our real difficulty.
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The Critique of Capitalism
Here two different kinds of commod ities ( in our example the linen and the coat ) , evidently play two different parts . The linen
expresses its value in the coat; the coat serves as the material in
which that value is expressed . The former plays an active, the latter
a passive, prt . The value of the linen is represented as relative value, or appears in relative form . The coat offici ates as equivalent, or appears in equivalent form .
The relative form and the equivalent form are two intimately
con nected, m utually dependent and inseparable elements of . the
expression of v a lue; b u t, at the same time, are m utually exclusive, antagonistic extremes-i.e. , poles of the same expression. They are allotted respectively to the two different c ommodities brought into relation by that expression. It is not possible to express the value of linen in linen. 20 yards o f linen
=
20 yards o f l inen is n o expres
sion of val ue. On the contrary, s uch an equation merely says that
20 yards o f linen are nothing else than 20 yards o f linen, a definite quantity of the use-value li nen . The value of the linen can there
fore be expressed only relatively-i.e., in some other commod ity.
The relative form of the value of the linen pre-supposes, therefore, the presence of some other commodity-here the coat-under the
form of an equivalent. On the other hand, the c o m m odity that
figures as the equivalent cannot at the same time assume the rela tive form . Tha t second commodity is not the one whose value is expressed. Its function is merely to serve a s the material in which
the value of the first commodity i s expressed.
No doubt, the expression 20 yards of linen
o f l inen are worth
1
2 0 yards of linen, or
=
1
coat, or 20 yards
coat, implies the opposite relation:
1
coat
=
coat is worth 20 yards of linen. B ut, in that case, I must reverse the equation, in order to express the value of 1
the coat relatively; and, so soon a s I do that, the linen becomes the
equivalent i nstead of the coat. A single commodity cannot, there
fore, simultaneously assume, in the same expression o f v alue, both
form s . The very polarity of these forms m akes them mutually exclu
sive.
Whether, then, a commodity assumes the relative form, or the
opposite equivalent form, depends entirely upon its accidental p osi
tion i n the expression of value-that is, upon whether it i s the
commodity whose value is being expressed or the comm odity in which value is being expressed. 2.
The Relative Form of Value
a. The Nature and Import of This Form In order to discover how the elementary expression of the v a lue
of a commodity lies hidden in the value-rel ation of two commodi
ties, we m ust, in the first place, consider the latter entirely apart
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Capital, Volume One
from its quantitative aspect. The usual m o d e of procedure is gener
proportion between definite quantities o f two different sorts of commodities that are considered equal to each other. I t i s apt to be
forgotten that the magnitudes of different things can be compared
quantitatively, only when those magnitudes are expressed in terms
of the same unit. I t is only as expressions of s u ch a unit that they are o f the same denomination, and therefore commensurable. \Vhether
20
yards of linen
=
1
coat or
=
20
coats o r
=
x
coats-that is, whether a given qu a ntity of linen is worth few or
inany coats, every s uch statement implies that the linen and coats,
a s magni tudes o f value, are expressions o f t h e s a m e unit, things of the same ki n d . Linen B u t the
two
=
coat is the basis o f the equation .
commodities
whose
identity
of quality
is
thus
assumed, do n o t play the same p a rt . I t is only the value of the
linen that is expressed . And h ow? By its reference t o the coat as
its equivalent, a s something that can be exchanged for it . I n this
relation the coat is the mode o f existence o f value, is value embod ied, for only as such is it the same as the linen . On the other h a n d ,
t h e linen's own v a l ue c o m e s to t h e front, receives independent expres s i on , for i t is only as being value that it is comparable with
the coat as a thing of equal value, or exchangeable with the c o a t. To borrow an illustration from chemistry, butyric acid is a different substance from propyl formate . Yet both are made up of the s a m e
chemical s u bstances, carbon
(C),
hydrogen ( H ) , a n d oxygen (0),
and that, too, in like proportions-namely C4HsO�. I f now we
equate butyric a cid to propyl form ate, then, in the fi rs t place,
propyl formate would be, in this relation, merely a form of exist
ence of C!HS02; and in the second place, we should be stating that
butyric acid also consists o f
C!HS02.
Therefore, by t h u s equating
the two s ubstances, expression would be given to their chemical
composition., while their different physical forms would b e neg�
lected.
If we say that, a s values, commodities are mere congela tions of
h uman labour, we reduce them by our anal ysis, it is true, to the abstraction, value; b u t we ascribe to this value no form apart from
their bodily form . It is otherwise in the value-relation of one com
modity to a n o ther. Here, the o n e stands forth in its character o f
v a l u e by reason o f its relation to the other.
By making the coat the equivalent of the linen, we e q u a te the
l::-bour embodied in the former to that in the latter. Now, it is hue
that the tailoring, which makes the coat, is concrete labour of a dif
ferent sort from the weaving which makes the linen . But the act of
equating i t to the weaving, reduces the tailoring t o that which i s really equal i n the two kinds o f labour, t o their common character
o f h u m an
lab o u r .
In
this
roundabout way, then,
the
fact
is
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The Critique of Capitalism
expressed, that weaving also, in so far as it weaves value, has n o t h ing to distinguish it from tailoring, and, consequently, is 'abstract human labour. It is the expression of equivalence between different sorts of commodities that alone brings into relief the specific ch ar_ acter of value-creating labour, and this it does by actually reducing
the different varieties of labour embodied in the different kinds o f commodities to their common quality of huma n labour in the abstrac t.4 There is, h owever, something else required beyond the expression of the specific character o f the labour of which the value o f the linen consists . Human labour-power in m o tion, or human labour, creates value, but i s not itself value. It becomes value only in its congealed state, when embodied i n the form o f some object. In order to express the value of the linen a s a congelation of human labour, that value must be expressed as having objective existence, a s being a something materially different from the linen itself, and yet a something common to the linen a n d all other commodities. The problem is already solved. \Vhen occupying the position o f equivalent in the equation of value, the coat ranks qualitatively as the equal of the linen, as s omething of the same kind, because i t i s value . In this position it
i s a thing i n which we see nothing but value, or whose palpable bodily form represents value. Yet the coat itself, the body o f the commodity, coat, is a mere use -value. A coat a s such no more tells us it i s value, than does the first piece of linen we take hold o f . T h i s shows that when placed in value-relation to t h e l i n e n , t h e coat signifies more than when out of that relation, jus t as many a man strutting about i n a gorgeous uniform counts for more than when in mufti. In the production of the coat, human labour-power, in the shape o f tailoring, must have been actually expended. Human labour is therefore accumulated in i t . I n this aspect the coat i s a depository of value, but though worn to a thread, it does not let this fact show through. And as equivalent of the linen in the value equation, it exists under this aspect alone, c o u n t s therefore as embodied value, a s a body that is value. A, for instance, cannot b e "your majesty" to B, unless at the same time majesty in B 's eyes assumes the 4. The celebrated Franklin, one of the first economists, aft er Wm. P et ty, who saw through the nature of value, says: "Trade in general being nothing else but the exchange of labour for labour, the value of all things is . . . most justly measured by labour." ("The works of B. Franklin, &c.," edited by Sparks. Boston, 1836, Vol. II., p. 267.) Franklin is unconscious that by estimating the value of everything in
labour, he makes abstraction from any difference in the sorts of labour ex changed, and thus reduce� them all to equal human labour. But although ig norant of this, yet he says it. He speaks first of "the one labour," then of· "the other labour," a nd finally of "labour," without further qualification. as the substance of the value of every thing. [Marx]
Capital, Volume One i.
31 7
bo dily form of A, a n d , what is more, with every new father o f the p eople, changes its features, hair, and m a n y other things besides . li ence, in the value equation, in which the coat is the equivalent
of the linen, the coat officiates a s the form o f value. The value of
the commodity linen is expressed by the bodily form of the com
modity coat, the value of one by the use-value of the o ther. A s a
use-value, the linen is something palpably different from the c oat;
as value, it is the s a m e as the coat, and now has the appearance of
a coat. Thus the linen acquires a value-form different from its phys
ical form . The fact that it is value, is m ade m a nifest by its equality
with the coat, just a s the shee p ' s nature of a Christian is shown in his resemblance to the Lamb of God . \Ve see, then, all that our analysis o f the value o f commodities has already told us, i s t old us by the linen itself, so soon as it comes
into communication with another commodity, the coat. Only it
betrays i t s thoughts in that language with which alone it is familiar,
the language of c o m m odities. In order to tel l u s that its own value
is created by l abour in its abstract character o f human l a bour, it says that the coat, in so far as i t i s worth as m u ch a s the linen, and therefore is value, consists of the sa me labour as the linen. In order
to inform us that its sublime real ity a s value is not the same as i t s
b u c k r a m b o d y , i t s a y s that value has t h e a ppearance o f a c o a t , and
consequently that s o far as the linen is value, i t a n d the coat are a s
l i k e a s t w o pea s . \Ve m ay h e r e remark, that the language of com
modities has, besides Hebrew, many other more or l ess correct
dialects .
expresses
The in
a
German less
"Wertsein,"
striking
manner
t o be
than
worth, the
for instance,
Romance
verbs
"valere," "valer," "valoir," that the equating o f commodity B to
commodity A, is commodity A's own m o d e of expressing its v al u e . Paris v a u t b i e n u n e messe.
By means, therefore, of the value-rel ation expressed in our equa
tion, the bodily form of commodity B becomes the value-form of
c o m modity A, or the body of commodity B acts as a mirror to the
value o f commodity A.5 B y putting itsel f i n relation with c o m m od
ity B, as value
in propria persona,
as the matter of which human
l a bour is m a d e up, the commodity A converts the value i n use, B,
into the substance in which to express its, A ' s , own v al u e. T h e value
o f A, th us expressed in the use-value of B, has taken the form of relative val u e. 5. In a sort of way. it is with man a s with commodities. Since he comes into the world neither with a looking glass in his hand. nor as a Fichtian philoso pher. to whom "I am In is sufficient. man first sees and recognises himself in other men. Peter only establis h es his
own identity as a man by first compar ing himself with Paul as being of like kind. And thereby Paul. just as he stands in his Pauline personality . be comes to Peter the type of th e genus homo. [Marx]
318
The Critique of Capitalism b. Quantitative Determination of Relative Value
Every commodity, whose value it is intended to express, is a
useful object of given quantity, as 1 5 bushels of corn, or 1 00 l b s . of
coffee. And a given quantity of any commo dity contains a definite
quantity of human labour. The value-form must therefore not only
express value generally, but also value in definite quantity. There
fore, in the value - relation of commodity A to commodity B, of the linen to the coat, not only is the latter, a s value in general, made the e q u al in quality o f the linen, but a definite qua ntity o f coat ( 1
coat) is m a d e the equivalent of a definite quantity ( 2 0 yards) of
linen .
The equation, 20 yards of linen=l coat, or 20 yards of linen are
worth one coat, implies that the same quantity of value-substance
( congealed labo u r ) is em bodied in both; th at the two c om m od ities
have each cost the same a m ount of labour of the same quantity of
labour-ti me. But t h e labour-time necessary for the production of 20
yards of line n or 1 coat varies with every change in the productive
ness of weaving or tailoring. We have now to consider the influ ence of such changes on the quantitativ e aspect of the relative expression of value .
I . Let the value of the linen vary,6 that of the coat remammg
constant. If, say in consequence of the exhaustion of flax-growing soil, the labour-time necessary for the production o f the linen be
doubled, the value of the linen will a l s o be doubled . I n stead o f the
equati on, 20 yards of l inen= 1 coat, we should h ave 20 yards of line n=2 coats, since 1 coat w o u l d now contain only half the labour-time embodied in 20 yards of linen . I f, on the other hand, in consequence, say, of improved looms, this labour-time b e reduced
by one-half, the value o f the linen would fall by one-half. Conse
quently, we should have 20 yards of linen=Yz coat. The relative value o f c o m m odity A ,
i.e.,
its value expressed i n c o m m odity B,
rises and falls directly a s the value of A, the value of B being sup posed constant.
II. Let the value o f the linen remain constant, w h i l e the v a l u e
of t h e c o a t varie s . I f, under these circ u m stances, i n consequence,
for instance, of a poor crop of wool, the labour-time necessary for
the prod uction o f a coat becomes doubled, we have instead o f 20 y a r d s of linen= 1 c oat, 2 0 y a r d s o f l i n en= Yz coat. I f, on the
other hand, the value o f t h e coat sinks by one-half, then 20 yards of li nen=2 coats . Hence, i f the value o f c o m m o dity A remain
constant, its relative value expressed in c o m m o d ity B rises and falls
inversely a s the value o f B .
6. Value i s here, as occasionally i n the preceding pages, used i n sense of value
determined as to quantity, or of magnitude of value. [Ma�%l
Capital, Volume One
3 19
I f w e compare the different cases in I . a n d I I., we see that the
s a m e change of magnitude in relative value m a y arise from totally opposite caus e s . Th us, the equation, 20 yards of linen=l coat,
becomes 2 0 yards o f linen= 2 coats, either, because the value of the
linen h a s d a'ubled, or because the value o f t h e coat has fallen by one-half; a n d i t becomes 20 yards o f linen=Y2 coat, either, because the value of the linen has fallen by one-hal f , o r because the v alqe of the coat has doubled . I I I . Let the quantities of l abour-time respectively n ecessary for the product ion of the linen and the coat vary simultaneously i n the
same direction and in the sa m e proportion. In this case 20 yards of
linen continue equal to 1 coat, however m u c h their values may
h a v e altered. T h e i r change o f v a l u e is seen a s soon a s they are com pared w i t h a third commodity, whose value h a s remained consta n t . I f t h e v a lues o f a l l commodities r o s e or fell s imultaneously, a n d i n
t h e s a m e proportion, their relative values would remain unaltered.
Their real change of value would appear from the diminished or increased quantity of commodities p r o d u c e d in a g i v e n time .
I V . The l abour-time respectively necessary for the production o f
the linen a n d the coat, and therefore the value o f these c o m modi
ties may simultaneously vary in the same direction, but a t unequal rates, or in opposite directions, or in other way s . The effect o f all
these possible different variations, on the relative value of a com m o d i ty, may be deduced from the results o f I ., I I., and I I I.
Thus real changes i n the magnitude of value are neither unequi
vocally nor exhaustively reflected in their relative expression, that is,
in the equation expressing the magnitude o f relative value. The rel ative value of a commodity may vary, a l though its value remains
consta n t . I ts relative value may remain constant, although its value
varies; and finally, simult aneous variations i n the magnitude of value and in that of its relative expression by no means necessari l y correspond in a m o u n t .
Section
4.
*
*
*
The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof
A commodity appears, a t first sight, a very trivial thing, a n d e a s i l y understood . Its analysis s h o w s that i t i s , in r e a l i t y , a very queer thing, abounding i n metaphysical subtleties and theological
niceties . So far as i t i s a value in use, there is nothing mysterious a bout it, whether we consider it from the point of view that b y its
properties it i s capable o f satisfying human wants , o r from the point
that those properties are the product of human labour. It is a s clear
as noon-day, that man, by his industry, changes the forms of the
m a terials furnished by Nature, i n s u ch a way as to make them
320
The Critique of Capitalism
useful to h i m . The form of wood, for instance, is altered, b y making a table out of it. Yet, for all that, the table continues to be that common, every-day thing, wood. But, so soon as it steps forth as a commodity, i t i s changed into something transcendent. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all othe r commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden b r ain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than "table-turning" ever was . The mystical character of commodities does not originate, there fore, in their use-value. Just as little does it proceed from the nature of the determining factors of value. For, in the first place, h owever varied the useful kinds of labour, or productive activities, may be, i t i s a physiological fact, tha t they a r e functions o f t h e h u m a n organ ism, and that each such function, whatever may be its nature or form, is essentially the expenditure of human brain, nerves, m us cles, &c. Secondly, with regard to that which forms the ground work for the quan titative determination of value, namely, the dura tion of that expenditure, or the quantity of labour, it is quite clear that there is a palpable difference between its quantity and quality. I n all states of s ociety, the labour-time that it costs to produce the means of subsistence, must necessarily b e a n object o f in terest to mankind, though not
o f equal interest in different stages of
development.7 And lastly, from the moment that men i n any way work for one another, their labour assumes a social form. Whence, then, arises the enigmatical cha racter of the product of labour, so soon as it assumes the form of commodities ? Clearly from this form itself. The equality o f all sorts o f human labour is expressed objectively by their products all being equally values; the measure of the expenditure of labour-power by the duration o f that expenditure, takes the form o f the quantity o f value o f the products of labour; and finally, the mutual relations o f the produc ers, within which the social character of their labour affirms i tself, take the form of a social relation between the products . A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because i n it t h e social character of men's labour appears to t h e m a s an objec tive cha�acter stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them a s a social relation, existing not between them selves, but between the products o f their labour. This is the reason why the products of labour become commodities, social things whose qualities are a t the same time perceptible a n d i m perceptible 7. Among the ancient Germans the unit for measuring land was what could be harvested in a day, and was called Tagwerk, Tagwanne (jurnale, or terra jurnalis, or diornalis), Mannsmaad. &c.
(See G. L. von Maurer. "Einleitung zur Geschichte der Mark-, &c. Ver fassung," MUnchen, 1854, p. 129 sq.) .
[Marx]
Capital, Volume One
321
by t h e senses . I n t h e s a m e way the light f r o m an object is perceived by us not as the subjective excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of something outside the eye itself. But, in the act of seeing, there is at all events, an actual passage of l ight from one thing to another, from the external object t o the eye . There is a physical relation between physical things . But it is different with commodities. There, the existence of the things
qua
commodities,
and the value-relation between the products o f labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connexion with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom . There i t is
a
definite social relation between men, that
assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things.
In order,
therefore, t o find an analogy, we m us t have
recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious worl d . I n -that world t h e productions o f the human brain appea r a s independ ent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one anot h e r and the human race . So it i s in the world of commodi ties with the products o f men's hands. This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products o f labour, so soon a s they are produced a s commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commoditie s . This Fetishism o f commodities h a s i t s origin, as the foregoing analysis has already shown, in the peculiar social character of the labour that produces them. As a general rule, articles o f utility become commodities, only because they are products of the labour o f private individuals or groups o f individuals who carry on their work independently o f each other. The s u m total o f t h e labour o f all these private individ uals forms the aggregate labour o f society. Since the producers do not come into social contact with each other until they exchange their products,
the specific social
character of each
producer's
labour does not show itself except in the act of exchange. I n other words, the labour o f the individual asserts itself a s a part of the labour o f society, only by means o f the relations which the act of
exchange establishes directly between the products, and indirectly, through them, between the producers . To the latter, therefore, the relations connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are, material relations between per sons and social relations between things. It is only by being exchanged tha t the products of labour acquire, as values, one uni form social status, distinct from their varied forms of existence as objects of utility. This division o f a product into a useful thing and a value becomes practically important, only when exchange has acquired such an extension that useful articles are produced for the
322
The Critique of Capitalism
p urpose of being exchanged, and their character as values has there
fore
to be
taken
i n to account,
beforehand,
during production .
From this m omen t the labour of the individual producer acquires
socially a t w o-fold character. On the one hand,
i t must, a s a
definite llseful k i n d of labour, satisfy a definite social want, a n d
t h u s h o l d i t s p l a c e as p a r t and parcel o f t h e collective labour of all,
a s a branch o f a social division o f labour that has sprung up sponta
neously. On the other hand, it can satisfy the manifold wants of the individual producer himself,
exchangeability
of
all
kinds
of
only in so useful
far as
private
the m u t u a l
labour
is
an
established social fact, and therefore the private useful labour o f
e a c h prod ucer r a n k s on a n equality with t h a t o f all others . The
equalisation of the most different kinds of labour can be the result
only o f an abstraction from their inequalities, or of reducing them to
their
common
denominator,
viz . ,
expenditure
of
human
labo u r-power or h u m a n labour in the abstract. TIle two-fold social
character o f t he labour of the individual appears to him, when reflected in his brain, only under t hose forms which are impressed upon that labour in every-day practice by the exchange of prod ucts. In this way, the character that his own labour possesses of being socially useful takes the form o f the condition, that the product
mu st be not only useful, but useful for others, and the social char
acter that h i s particular labour has o f being the equal of an other particular kinds o f labour, takes the form that an the physically d i f ferent articles that are the products of labour, have one common
quality, viz. , that o f having val ue.
Hence, when we b ring the products of our labour into relation
with each other a s values, i t is n o t because we see in these articles
the material receptacles of homogeneous human l a b o u r . Quite the
contrar y : whenever, b y an exchange, we e q uate as val ues o u r differ
ent products, by th a t very act, we a l so equate, as h u m a n labour, the different kinds o f labour expended upon them. W e are not
aware o f this, nevertheless we d o it. Value, therefore, d oes not stalk about with a label describing w h a t it i s . It is v alue, rather, that con
verts every product into a social hieroglyphic. Later o n , we try to
decipher t he hieroglyphic, to get behind the secret af o u r own
social products; for to stamp a n object of utility a s a val ue, i s just as much a social product a s l anguage. The recent scientific discovery,
that the products of labour, s o far as they a re values, are but ma te rial expressions of the h u m a n labour spent in their production,
marks, indeed, an epoch in the history o f the devel opment o f the human race, but, by no m eans, dissipates the mist through which
the social character o f labour appears to us t o b e a n objective ch a r
acter of the products themselves . The fact, that in the particular
form o f production w i th which we are dealing, v iz . , the production
Capital, Volume One
323
o f commodities, t h e specific social character of private labour car ried on independently, consists in the equality of every kind of that
labour, by virtue of its being human labour, which character, there fore, assumes in the product the form of value-this fact appears to th e p roducers, notwithstanding the discovery above referred to, to
be j u st as real and final, as the fact, that, after the d iscovery by sci
ence of the component gases of air, the atmosphere itself remainerl . unaltered .
\Vhat, first of all, practically concerns producers when they make
an exchange, is the question, how much of some other prod uct they get for their own? in what proportions
the products are
exchangeable? When these proportions have, b y custom, attained a certain stability, they appear to result from the nature of the p ro d ucts, so that, for instance, one ton of iron a n d two ounces of gold
appear as n a t u rally to b e of equal value as a pound of gold and a pound of iron in spite of their different physical and chemical qual
ities appear to b e of equal weight. The character of having value,
when once impressed upon products, obtains fixity only by reason
of their acting and re-acting upon each other as quantities of val ue.
These q u antities vary continually, independent l y of the w i l l , fore
sight and action of the producers. To them, their own social a ction
takes the form of the action of objects, which rule the producers
instead of being ruled by the m . It requires a fully developed pro
duction of com m o d i t ies before, from accumulated experience alone,
the scientific convict ion springs up, that a l l the d i fferent kinds of
private l a bour, w h i c h are c a r r i e d on independently of each other, and yet as spontaneously developed branches of the social division
o f labour, are continually being reduced to the quantitative p ropor tions in which society requires them. And why? B ecause, in the
midst of all the accidental and ever fluctuating exchange-relat ions between the products, the labour-time social l y necessary for their
production forcibly a sserts itself like an over-riding l aw o f Nature.
The law of gravity thus asserts itself when a house falls about our
e a rs.s The determination of the magnitude of value by l abour-time is therefore a secret, hidden under the apparent fluctuations in the
relative val ues of commodities. Its d iscovery, while removin g all
appearance of mere accidentality from the determination of t he
magnitude of the values of products, yet in no way alters the mode in which that determ ination takes place .
Man's reflections on the form s of social life, and conse quently,
also, his scientific analysis o f those forms, take a course directly 8. "What are we to think of a law that asserts itself only by periodical revolu tions? It is just nothing but a law of Nature, foun ded on the want of knowl edge of those whose action is the sub-
ject of it." (Friedrich Engels: "Um risse zu einer Kritik de N ationaliikon ornie," in the "Deutsch-Franziisische Jahrbiicher," edited by Arnold Ruge and Karl Marx. Paris, 1844.) [MaTx]
324
The Critique of Capitalism
opposite to that of their actual historical develop m e n t . He begins, post festum, with the results of the process of development ready to hand before h i m . The characters tha t stamp products as com modities, and whose establishment is a necessary preliminary to the circulation of commodities, have already acquired the stability of na tural, self-understood forms of social life, before man seeks to decipher, not their his torical character, for in his eyes they are immutable, but their meaning. Consequently it was the analysis of the prices o f commodities that alone led t o the determination of the magnitude of value, and it was the common expression of all commodities in money that alone led to the establishment o f their characters a s v alues . It is, however, just this ultimate money-for m of t h e world of commodities that actually conceals, instead of dis closing, the social character of private labour, and the social rela tions between the individual producers . When I state that coats or boots stand in a relation to linen, because it is the universal incar nation of abstract h u man labour, the absurdity of the statement i s self-evident. Nevertheless, when t h e producers o f c o a t s and boots compare those articles with linen, or, what i s the same thing, with gold o r silver, as t h e universal equivalent, they express the relation between their own private labour and the collective labour of societv in the sam e absurd form . Th� categories of bourgeois economy consist of such like form s . They are forms o f thought expressing with social validity the condi tions and relations of a definite, historically determined mode of production, viz . , the production of commodities. The whole mys tery of com m odities, all the magic and necromancy tha t surrounds t he products of l abour as long as they take the form o f commodi ties, vanishes t herefore, so soon as we come to other forms of p roduction. Since Robinson C rusoe's experiences are a favourite theme with political economists, let us take a look a t him on his islan d . l\:lode r ate th ough he be, yet some few wants he h a s to satisfy, and must therefore do a little useful work of various sorts, such as m aking tools and furniture, taming goats, fishing and hunting . O f his pray ers and the like we take no account, since they are a source of pleasure to him, a n d he looks upon them as s o much recreation .. In sp ite of the variety of h i s work, he knows tha t his labour, whatever its form, i s but the activity o f one and the same Robinson, and consequently, tha t it consists o f nothing but different m odes of human l abour. Necessity itself compels him to apportion his time accurately between his different kinds of work. \Vhether one kind occupies a greater space i n his general activity than another, depends on the d ifficulties, greater or less a s the case may be, to b e overcome in a ttaining the useful effect aimed at. This our friend
325
Capital, Volume One
Robinson s o o n learns b y experience, a n d having rescued a watch, ledger, and pen and ink from the wreck, commences, like a true born Briton, to keep a set of books . His stock-book contains a list of the objects o f utility th a t belong to h i m , o f the operations neces sary for their production; and las tly, of the l abour- time that definite quantities of those objects have, on an average, cost h i m . All the relations between Robinson and the objects tha t form this wealth o f his own creation , are here s o simple and clear as to be intelligi ble without exertion, even to Mr. Sedley Taylor. And yet those rela tions contain an tha t is essential to the determination of val ue . Let us now transport ourselves from Robinson 's island bathed in light to the European middle ages shrouded in darkness. Here, instead of the independent man, we find everyone dependent, serfs and
lords,
vassals
and
suzerains,
laymen
and
clergy.
Personal
dependence here characterises the social relations of production just as much as it d o e s t h e other spheres of life organised on t h e basis of that production. But for the very reason that personal dependence forms the ground-work of society, there i s n o necessity for labour and its products t o assume a fantastic form different from their reality. They take the shape, in the transactions of society, of serv ices in kind and payments in kin d. Here the particular and natural form of labour, and not, as in a society based on prod uction of commodities, its general abstract form is the i m mediate social form of labour. Compulsory labour is just as properly measured by time, a s commodity-producing labour, but every serf knows that what he expends i n the service of his lord, is a definite quantity of his own personal labour-power. The tithe to be rendered to the pries t i s more matter of f a c t than his blessing . N o matter, then, w h a t w e m a y think o f t h e parts played by t h e different classes o f people themselves i n this society, the social relations between individuals in the performance of their labour, appear at all events as their own mutual personal relations, and are n o t disguised under the shape of . social relations between the products of labour. For an example of l a b o u r in common or directly associated
labour, we have no occasion to go back to that spontaneously dev e l oped form which we find on the threshold of the history of all civi� lised races. \Ve have one close at hand in the patriarchal industries of a peasant family, that prod uces corn, cattle, yarn, linen, and clothing for home use. These different articles are, as regards t h e family, so many products of its labour, b u t as between themselves, they are not commodities . The different kinds of labour, such as til lage, cattle tending, spinning, weaving and making clothes, which result in the various products, are in themselves, and such as they are, direct social functions, because functions o f the family, which, just as much a s a society based on the production of commodities,
326
The Critique of Capitalism
possesses a spontaneously developed system of division of labour. The distribution of the work within the family, and the regulation of the labour-time of the several members, depend as well upon differences of age and sex as upon natural conditions varying with the seasons. The labour-power of each individual, by its very nature, operates in this case merely as a definite portion of the whole labour-power of the family, and therefore, the measure of the expenditure of individual labour-power by its duration, appears here
by its very nature as a social character of their labour. Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of change, a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of pro duction in common, in which the labour-power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labour-power of the community. All the characteristics of Robinson's labour are here repeated, but with this difference, that they are social, instead of individual. Everything produced by him was exclusively the result of his own personal labour, and therefore simply an object of
use for himself. The total product of our community is a social
product. One portion serves as fresh means of production and remains social. But another portion is consumed by the members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this portion amongst them is consequently necessary. The mode of this distribution will vary with the productive organisation of the community, and the degree of historical development attained by the producers. We will assume, but merely for the sake of a parallel with the produc tion of commodities, that the share of each individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour-time. Labour-tillle would, in that case, play a double part. Its apportion ment in accordance with a definite social plan maintains the proper proportion between the different kinds 0-£ work to be done and the various wants of the community. On the other hand, it also serves as
a
measure of the portion of the common labour borne by each
individual, and of his share in the part of the total product des tined for -individual consumption. The social relations of the indi vidual producers, with regard both to their labour and to its prod ucts, are in this case perfectly simple and intelligible, and that with regard not only to production but also to distribution. The religious world is but the reflex of the real world. And for a society based upon the production of commodities, in which the producers in general enter into social relations with one another by treating their products as commodities and values, whereby they reduce their individual private labour to the standard of homoge neous human labour-for such a society, Christianity with its cultus of abstract man, more especially in its bourgeois develop ments, Protestantism, Deism, &c., is the most fitting form of reli-
Capital) Volume One
327
gion . In the ancient Asiatic and other ancient modes of production, we find that the conversion of products into commodities, and therefore the conversion of men into producers of commodities, holds a subordinate place, which, howeve�, increases in importance as the primitive communities approach nearer and nearer to their dissolution. Trading nations, properly so called, exist in the · ancient world only in its interstices, like the gods of Epicurus in the Inter mundia, or like Jews in the pores of Polish society. Those ancient social organisms of production are, as compared with bourgeois society, extremely simple and transparent. But they are founded either on the immature development of man individually, who has not yet severed the umbilical cord that unites him with his fellow men in a primitive tribal community, or upon direct relations of subjection . They can arise and exist only when the development of the productive power of labour has not risen beyond a low stage, and �hen, therefore, the social relations within the sphere of mate rial life, between man and man, and between man and Nature, are correspondingly narrow. This narrowness is reflected in the ancient worship of Nature, and in the other elements of the popular reli gion s. The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then finally vanish, when the practical relations of every-day life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellowmen and to Nature. The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan . This, however, demands for society a certain material ground-work or set of condi tions of existence which in their turn are the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development. Political Economy has indeed analysed, h owever incompletely, value and its magnitude, and has discovered what . lies beneath these forms. But it has never once asked the question why labour is represented by the value of its product and labour-time by the mag nitude of that value. These formulre, which bear it stamped upon them in unmistakeable letters that they belong to a state of society, in which the process of production has the mastery over man, instead of being controlled by him, such formulre appear to the bourgeois intellect to be as much a self-evident necessity imposed by Nature as productive labour itself. Hence forms of social produc tion that preceded the bourgeois f orm, are treated by the bourgeoi sie in much the same way as the Fathers of the Church treated pre Christian religions. To what extent some eco nomists are misled by the Fetishism •.
inherent in commodities, or by the objective appearance of the
328
The Critique of Capitalism
social characteristics of labo).lr, is shown, amongst other ways, by the dull and tedious quarrel over the part played by Na ture in the formation of exchange-value. Since exchange-value is a definite social manner of expressing the a m o u n t o f labour bestowed upon object, Nat ure has n o more to do with it, than i t has in fixing the course of exch ange. The mode of production in which the product takes the form of a commodity, or is produced directly for exchange, is the most gen era l and most embryonic form of bourgeois p ro d u ct ion. It therefore makes its appearance at an early date in history, though not in the same predominating and characteristic manner as now-a-days. Hence its Fetish character is comparatively easy to be seen through . B u t when w e come to more concrete forms, even this appearance o f sim plicity vanishes.
\Vhence arose the ill usions
of
the
m o netary
system? To it gold and silver, when serving as money, did not rep resent a social relation between producers but were natural objects with strange social properties. And moder n economy, which looks down with such disdain o n the monetary system, does not i ts superstition come out as clear as noon-day, whenever it treats o f capita l ? H o w l o n g is i t since economy discarded t h e physiocratic il lusion, that rents grow out o f the soil and not out of society? B ut not to anticipate, we will content ourselves with yet another example relating to the comm odity-form. Could commodities them selves speak, they would say : Our use-value may be a thing that interests men . It is no part of us a s ob jects . \Vhat, however, does belong to us as objects, is our value. Our natural intercourse as commodities proves i t . In the eyes of eac h ot her we are nothing but exchange-va lues. Now listen how t hose commodities s peak through t he mouth of the economist. "Value"- ( i . e . , exchange-value) "is a property of things, riches"- ( i.e., use-val ue ) " o f ma n . Value, in this sense, necessarily implies exchanges, riches d o n o t . " " Riches" ( use-vallie ) "are the attribute of men, value i s the attribute of com m o di ties . A man or a comm unity is rich, a pearl or a diamo n d is valuable . . . A pearl or a diamond is valuable" as a pea r l o r dia .
mond. So far no chemist has ever discovered exchange-value eit her in a pearl or a diamond. The economic discoverers of this chemical element, who by-the- by lay special claim to critical acumen, find however that the use-value o f objects bel ongs to t hem in depend en tly of their material properties, while t heir value, on the ot her hand, forms a part of t hem as objects . vVhat confirms them in this view, is the p eculiar circumstance that the use-value of objects is realised without exchange, by means of a direct relation between the objects and man, while, on the other h a n d , their value is real ised only by exchange, that is, by means of a social process . Who fails here to call to mind our good friend, Dogberry, who informs
Capital, Volume One
32 9
neighbour Seacoal, that, "To be a well-favoured m a n is the gift o f fortune; but reading and writing comes by Nature." ______
--..... . � ....�
Part I I . The Tra n s form ation of l\:l oney into Capital CHAPTER IV. THE GENERAL FORMULA F O R CAPITAL
The circulation of commodities is the starting-point of capita l . The production o f commodities, their circulation, a n d that m ore developed form of their circulation called commerce, these form the historical ground-work from which it rise s . The modern history o f capital dates from the creation in the 1 6th century o f a world embracing commerce and a world-embracing market. If we abstract from the material substance of the circulation of commodities, that is, from the exchange of the various use-values, and consider only the economic forms pro d uced by this process of circulation, we find its final result to be money : this final product of the circulation o f commodities is the first form in which capital appears. As a matter of history, capital, as opposed to l anded property, invariably takes the form at first of money; it appears as moneyed wealth, as the capital of the merchant and of the usurer. But we have n o need to refer to the origin o f capital in order to discover that the first form of appearance of capital is m oney. We can see it daily under our very eye s. All new capital, to commence with, comes on the stage, that is, on the market, whether o f commodi ties, labour, or money, even in o u r days, in the shape of money that by
a definite process has to be transformed into capital. The first distinction we notice bet ween money that is m oney
only, and money that is capital, is nothing more than a differenGe in their form of circula tion . The simplest f o r m of t h e circulation o f commodities is C-M-C, the transformation of commodities into money, and the change of the money back again into commodi ties; or selling in order to buy. B u t alongside of this form we find another specifically different form : M-C-M, the transformation of money into com modit ies, and the c hange of commodities back again into money; or buying in order to sel l . Money that circulates in the latter manner i s thereby transformed into, becomes capital, and i s already potentially capital . Now let us examine the circuit M-C-M a little closer. It con sists, like the other, of two antithetical pha s e s . In the first phase, M-C, or the purchase, the money is changed into a commodity.
\
J \
330
The Critique of Capitalism
In the second phase, C-M, o r the sale, the commodity is changed back again into money. The combination of these two phases con stitutes the single movement whereby money is exchanged for a commodity, and the same commodity is again exchanged for money; whereby a commodity is bought in order to be sold, or, neg lecting the distinction in form between buying and selling, whereby a commodity is bought with a commodity. The result, in which the phases oJ the process vanish, is the exchange of money for money, M-M. If I purchase 2 ,000 lbs. of cotton for £ 1 00, and resell the
2,000 lbs . of cotton for £I 1 0, I have, in fact, exchanged £ 1 00 for £ 1 1 0, money for money.
Now it is evident that the circuit M-C-M would be absurd and without meaning if the intention were to ' exchange by this means two equal sums of money, £ 1 00 for £ 1 00 . The miser's plan
would be far simpler and surer; he sticks to his £ 1 00 instead of
exposing it to the dangers of circulation . And yet, whether the mer chant who has paid £ 1 00 for his cotton sells it for £ 1 1 0, or lets i t
go f o r £ 1 00, o r even £5 0, h i s m o n e y has, a t all event s, gone through a characteristic and original movement, quite different in kind from that which i t goes through i n the hands o f the peasant who sells corn, and with the money thus set free buys clothes . \Ve have therefore to examine first the distinguishing characteristics o f t h e forms of t h e circuits M-C-M a n d C-l\f-C, a n d in doing this the real difference that underlies the mere difference o f form will reveal itself. Let us see,
in
the first place, w hat the two forms have in
common . B oth circuits are resolvable into the same two antithetical ph ases, C-M, a sale, a n d M-C,
a
purchase. In each of t hese phaseS the
same material elemen ts-a commodity, and money, and the same economic drama tis persona!, a buyer and a seller-confront one another. Each circuit is the unity of the same two a.ntithetical phases, and in each case this unity is brought about by the inter vention of three contracting parties, of whom one only sells, another only buys, while the third both buys and sells. What, however, . first and foremost distinguishes the circuit C-M-C from the circuit M-C-M, is the i nverted order of succession o f the two phases . The simple circulation o f commodi ties begins with a sale and ends with a purchase, while the circula tion of money as capital begins with a purch ase and ends with a sale . In the one case both the starting-point and the goal are com modities, in the other they are money. In the first form the move ment i s brought about by the intervention of money, i n the secon d by t h a t of a commodity. In the circulation C-M-C, the money is in the end converted into a commodity, that serves as a use-value; it is spent once for all .
Capital, Volume One
331
In the inverted form, l\1-C-M, on the contrary, the buyer lays out money i n order that, as a seller, he may recover money. By the purchase of his commodity he throws money into circulation, in order to withdraw i t again by the sale of the same commod ity. He lets the money go, but only with the sly intention of getting it back again . The money, therefore, is not s pent, it is merely adv ance. In the circuit C-M-C, the s ame piece of money changes its place twice. The seller gets it from the buyer and pays it away to another seller. The complete circulation, which begins with the receipt, concludes with the payment, of money for commod ities . It is the very contrary in the circuit M-C-M. Here it is not the piece of money that changes its place twice, b u t the commodity. The buyer takes it from the hands of the seller a n d passes it into the hands of another buyer . Just a s in the simple circulation of commodities the double change of place of the same piece of money effects its passage from one h a n d into another, so here t h e double change of place of the same commodity brings abo u t the reflux of the money to its point of departure. Such reflux is not dependent on the commodity being sold for more than was paid for it. This circumstance infl uences only the amount of the money that comes back. The reflux itself takes place, so soon as the purchased commodity is resold , i n other words, so soon a s the circuit l\1-C-M is completed . \Ve have here, there fore, a palpable difference between the circulation of money as cap ital, and its circulation as mere money. The circuit C-M-C comes completely to a n end , so soon as the money brought i n by the sale of one commodity i s abstracted again by the p urchase of another. I f, nevertheless, there follows a reflux of money to its starting point, this can only happen through a renewal o r repetition o f the
operation. If I sell a quarter of corn o f £ 3 , and with this £3 buy
clothes, the money, s o far a s I am concerned, is spent and done with . It belongs to the clothes merchant. If I now sell a second quarter of corn, money indeed flows back to me, not however a s · a, sequel to the first transaction, b u t in consequence o f its repetition. The money again leaves me, so soon a s I complete this second trans action by a fresh purchase. Therefore , i n the circuit C-M-C , the expenditure of money h a s nothing to do with i t s reflux. On the other hand, i n M-C-M, the reflux o f the money is conditioned by the very mode of i t s expenditure. \Vithout this reflux, the opera tion fails, or the process is interrupted and incomplete, owing to the absence of its complementary and final phase, the sale. The circuit C-M-C starts w i t h one com modity, and fi n ishes with another, which falls out of circulation a n d into consumption . Consumption, the satisfaction of wants, in one word, use-value, is its end and aim. The circuit M-C-M, on the contrary, com-
332
The Critique of Capitalism
mences with money and ends with money. Its leading motive, and
the goal that attracts it, i s therefore mere exchange-value ..
In the simple circulation of commodities, the two extremes of
the cirr.uit have the same economic form . They are both commodi
ties, and commodities of equal val ue. But they are also use-values
differing in their qualities, as, for example, corn and clothes . The
exchange o f products, of the differe n t materials in which the labour
o f society is embodied, forms here the basis of the movemen t . It is
otherwise in the circulation M-C-M, which at first sight appears
purposeless,
because tautological . Both extremes have the s a me
economic form . They are both money, and therefore are not q uali
tatively d ifferent use-values; for money is but the converted form of
commodities,
in
which
their
particular
use-values
v a n ish .
exchange £ 1 00 for cotton, and then this same cotton
To
again for
£ 1 1 0, is merely a roundabout way of exchanging money for money, the same for the same, and appears to be a n operation just as pur
poseless a s it is abs u r d . O n e sum o f money is distinguishable from
another only b y its amount. The character and tendency o f the
process M-C-M, is therefore not due to any qualitative differ
ence between its extremes, both being money, but solely to their
q u a n titative di ff erence. More money i s withdrawn from circulation
a t the finish than was thrown into it a t the start. The cotton that
was bought for £ 1 00 i s perhaps resold for £ 1 0 0 + £ 1 0 or £ 1 1 0 . The
exact form o f this process is therefore l\1-C-l\f', where 1\1' =
M + 6M
=
the original sum advanced, plus a n increment. This
increment or excess over the original value I call " s u rplus-value . " The value originally advanced, therefore, not only remains i n t a c t while
i n circulation, but adds to itself a surplus-value o r expands itsel f.
I t i s this movement that converts i t into capital .
O f course, i t is also possible, that in C-M-C, the two ex
tremes C-C, say corn and clothes, may represent different quan
tities o f value . The farmer may sell h i s corn above its value, or may
buy t h e clot hes a t less than their value . He may, on the other h a n d , " b e done" by the clothes merchant. Yet, in the form o f cir
culation now under consideration, such differences in value are
purely accidental. T h e fact that the corn and the clothes are equiv alents, does n o t deprive the process of all meaning, a s it does in
M-C-M. The equivalence o f their values is rather a necessary condition to its normal cours e .
T h e repetition o r renewal o f t h e act o f selling i n o r d e r to b u y , i s
k e p t w ithin b o u n d s by the very o b j e c t i t aims a t , namely, consum p
t i o n o r t h e satisfaction o f definite wants, an aim that lies alto
gether outside the sphere of circulatio n . B ut when we buy in order t o sell, we, on the contrary, begin a n d e n d with the same thing,
money, exchange-value; and thereby the movement becomes inter minabl e . No doubt, M becomes M + 6 1\1, £ 1 00 become £ 1 1 0 . B ut
Capital, Volume One
33 3
when viewed i n their qualitative aspect alone, £ 1 1 0 are the same a s
£ 1 00, namely money; and considered quantitatively, £ 1 1 0 is, like
£ 1 00, a sum of definite and limited value . If now, the £ 1 1 0 be spent as money, they cease to play their part. They are n o longer
capital. \Vithdrawn from circulation, they become petrified into a
hoard, and though they remained in tha t state till doomsday, n o t a
single farthing would accrue to the m . I f, then, the expansion of
value is once aimed at, there is j u s t the same inducement to aug
ment the value o f the £ 1 1 0 as that of the £ 1 00; for both are but
limited expressions for exchange-value, and therefore both have the
same vocation to approach, by quantitative ·increase, a s near a s pos
sible to absolute wealth . Momentarily, indeed, the value originally
advanced, the £ 1 00, is distinguishable from the surplus-value of £ 1 0
that i s annexed t o i t during circulation; b u t the distinction v a nishes
immediately. At the end of the process, we do not receive with one
hand the original £ 1 00, a n d with the other, the surplus-value of £ 1 0. We s i m p l y get a v a l u e of £ 1 1 0, w h i c h is in exactly the s a m e
c o n d i t i o n a n d fitn e ss for commencing the expanding process, as t h e
original £ 1 00 was . M o n e y e n d s the m o v e m e n t only to begin i t again .9 Therefore, t h e fi n a l r e s u l t of every separate circuit, in which
a purchase a n d consequent sale are completed, forms of itself the starting-point of a new circuit. The simple circulation of commodi
ties-selling i n order to buy-is a means of carrying out a p u rpose
unconnected w i t h circulation, namely, the appropriation of use values, the satisfaction o f wants . The circulation of money as capi tal is, on the contrary, an end in itself, for the expansion of value
takes place only within this constantly renewed mov ement. The cir culation of capital h a s therefore no limits . !
9 . "Capital
i s divisible . . . i n t o the original capital and the profi t , the i n crement to the capital . . . although in practice this p r o fi t is imm ediately turned into capital, a n d s e t in m o t i o n with the original . " (F. Engels, " Um risse zu einer Kritik der Nationalokon omi e, in the "Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiich er," edited by Ar nold R uge and Karl M arx." Paris, 1 8 4 4 , p. 99 . )
[Marx] 1. Aristot l e
opposes Oeconomic to Chrematistic. H e starts from the former. So far as it i s the art of gaining a livelihood, it is limited to procuring those articles that are necessary to e x ist ence, and usef u l either to a household or the state. "True wealth consis t s of such v a l u e s in use; for the quantity of poss ession s o f this k ind, capable of making l i f e pleasant,. i s not u n l i mited. There i s , however, a second mode of ac quiring things, to which we may by preference and with correctness give the name of Chrematistic, and i n this case there appear to be n o limits to riches and posse s s i ons. Trade ( l iterally re-
tail trade, and Aristotle takes this kind hecause in i t value s i n use predominate) does not in its nature belong to Chrem atistic, for here the e xch ange has refer ence only t o what i s necessary t o them selves ( t h e buyer or se ll er } . " Therefore, as he goes on to show, the ori gi nal form of trade was barter, but w i t h the ·exten sion of the latter, there arose the . n eces sity for money. On the discove ry of money, barter of nece ssity developed into· trading in commodities, a nd this a g a i n, in opposition t o its original ten dency, grew into Chrematistic, into the art of mak ing money. N ow Chrematistic i s distinguishable from Oeconomic in this way, that "in the case o f Chrema tistic circulation is the source of riches. And i t appears to r e volve about money, for money is the beginning a nd e nd o f this kind o f exchange. Therefore a l s o riches, s u c h a s Chrematistic strives for, are unlimited. J u s t as every art that is not a means to an end, but an end i n it s e lf, has no limit to its aims, because it seeks constantly t o approach nearer and nearer to that e n d , while those arts that
334
The Critique of Capitalism
As the conscious representative of this movement, the possessor o f money becomes a capitalist. His person, o r rather his pocket, is the point from which the money starts and to which it returns. The expansion o f value, which is the objective basis o r main-spring of the circulation M-C-M, becomes his subjective aim, and it is only in so far as the appropriation of ever more and more wealth in the abstract becomes the sole mo tive of his operations, that he func t ions as a capitalist, that is, as capital personified a n d endowed with consciousness and a w i l l. Use-values m us t therefore never be looked upon as the real aim of the capitalist; neither must the profit on any single transaction. The restless never-ending process of p rofit-making alone is what he aims at. This boundless greed after riches, this passionate c hase after exchange-value, i s common to the capitalist and the miser; but while the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser. The never-ending a ug mentation of exchange-value, which the m iser strives after, by seek ing to s ave his money from circulation, is attained by the more acute capitalist, by constantly throwing i t afresh into circulation . The independent form, i . e ., the money-form, which the value of commodities assumes in the case of simple circulation, serves only one purpose, namely, their exchange, and vanishes i n the final result of the movement. On the other hand, i n the circulation M-C-M, both the money and the commodity represent only dif ferent modes of existence of value itself, the money its general mode, and the commodity its particular, or, so to say, disguised mode. I t is consta n tly changing from one form to the other without thereby becoming l ost, and thus assumes a n automatically active character. I f now we take in turn each of the two different forms which self-expanding value success ively assumes in the course of its life, we then arrive a t these two propositions : C apital i s mone y : Capital is commod ities. I n truth, however, value is here t h e active factor in a process, in which, while constantly ass uming the form in turn of money and commodities, i t a t the same time changes in magnitude, d ifferentiates itself by throwing off surplus -value from itself; the original value, in other words, expands spontaneously. For the movement, i n the course o f which i t adds surplus-value, is its own movement, i ts expansion, therefore, is a utomatic expansion . B ecause it is value, it has acquired the occult quality of being able
pursue !)leans to an end, are not bound less, since the goal itself imposes a limit upon them, so with Chrematistic, there are no bounds to its aims, these aims being absolute wealth. Oeconomic not Chrematistic has a limit . . . the object of the former is something different from money, of the latter the augmenta-
tion o f money. . . . By confounding these two forms, which overlap each other, some people have been led to look upon the preservation and increase of money ad infinitum as the end and aim of Oecono mic . " (Aristoteles, "De Rep. " edit. Bekker. lib. I . c . 8 , 9 . pa ssim.) [Marx]
�:;:to a d d value t o itself . ;n i� ast, lays golden egg s . ::: '
';:
'
335
Capital, Volume One
[lIi<. .
� f.'
I t brings forth living offspring, or, at the
Value, therefore, being t h e active factor in such a process, a n d
as suming at o n e t i m e t h e f o r m o f m o n e y , a t a n o t h e r t h a t o f commodities,
but
through
all
these
changes
preserving
itself
and
expanding, it requires some independent form, by means o f which . : . i t s identity m a y a t any time be established. A n d this form i t pas :: : sesses only in the shape of money. It is under the form of money ,
'.
th at value begins and ends, a n d begins again, every act o f its own . ' sp ontaneous generation. It began by. being £ 1 00, i t is now £ 1 1 0, and so on . But the money itself is only one of the two forms o f value. Unless i t takes the form o f s o m e commodity, i t does not
. become capital . There is here no antagonism, a s in the case of hoarding, between the money a n d
commodities.
T h e capitalist
knows that a l l commodities, however scurvy they may look, or how e ver badly they may smell, are in faith and in truth money, inwardly circumcised Jews, a n d what is more, a wonderful means
whereby o u t o f money to make more money. In
simple circulation,
C-M-C,
the
value o f commodities
attained a t the mo st a form independent o f their use-values,
i.e.,
the form of money; but thaf s a m e value now in the circulation
l\:I-C-M, o r the circulation o f capital, suddenly presents itself as
an independent substance, endowed with a motion of its own, p as s ing through a life-process of its own, in which money and commod ities are m ere forms which it assumes and casts off in turn. Nay,
more : instead o f simply representing the relations o f commodities,
it enters now, s o to say, into private relations with itsel f. It differ
entiates itself a s original value from itself a s surplus-value; as the father differentiates himself from himself qua the son, yet both are
one and of one age : for only b y the surplus-value of £ 1 0 does the £ 1 00 originally advanced become capit a l, and s o soon as this takes
place, so soon as the son, and b y the son, the father, i s begotten, so
soon does
their difference vanish, and they again become one,
£1 10. Value therefore now becomes value i n process , money i n process;
and, a s s uch, capital . I t comes out of circulation, enters i n t o it again, preserves a n d multiplies itself within i t s circuit, comes back
out of i t with expanded bulk, and begins the same round ever
afresh . M-M', money which begets money, such is the description
o f Capital from the mouths of its first interpreters, the Mercantilists. B uying in order to sell, or, more accurately, buying in order t o
s e l l dearer, l\:I-C-M' , appears certainly to b e a f o r m pecul i a r t o
o n e k i n d o f capital alone, namely merchants' capital . B ut indus trial capital too i s money, that is changed into commod ities, a n d by
the sale of these c o m m od i ties. is re-converted into more money.
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The Critique of Capitalism
The events that take place outside the sphere o f circulation, in the interval between the buying and selling, do not affect the form of this movemen t . L astly, in the case of interest-bearing capital, the circulation M-C-M' appears abridged. \Ve have its result with o u t the intermediate stage, in the form M-M', "en style lapidaire" so to say, money that is worth more money, value that is greate r than itself. M-C-M' i s therefore in realit y the general formula o f capital
as it appears prima facie within the sphere of circulation .
*
*
*
CHAPTER VI . THE B UYI NG AND SE LLI NG OF LAB O UR-POWER The change of value that occurs in the case of money intended to be converted into capital, cannot take place in the money itself, since in its function of means o f purchase and of payment, i t does no more than realise the price o f the commodity i t buys o r pays for; a n d, as hard cash, i t is value petrified, never varying. Just as little
can i t originate in the second act of circulation, the re-sale of the commodity, which does n o more than transform the article from i ts bodily form back again into its money-form . The change must, therefore, take place i n the commodity bought by the first act, 1\1 -C, but not in i ts value, for equivalents are exch anged, and the commodity is pa i d for at its full val u e . We are, therefore, forced to the conclusion that the change originat � s in the use-value, as s uch,
o f the commodity, i . e . , in its consumption . In order to be able to extract value from the consumption of a commodity, our friend, M oneybags, must be so lucky as to find, within the sphere o f circu lation, in the market, a commodity, whose use-value possesses the peculiar property o f being a source of value, whose actual consump tion, therefore, is itself an embodiment of labour, and conse quently, a creation of value. The possessor o f money does . fin d on
t he market s uch a special commodity i n capacity for labour o r la bour-power. B y labour-power or capacity for labour is to be un derstood the aggregate of th ose mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description. But in order that our owner o f money may be able to find labour-power offered for sale as a commodity, various conditions m us t first be fulfilled. The exchange o f commodities of itself implies no other relations of dependence than those which result from its own nature. On this assumption, labour-power can appear upon the
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337
m arket as a c o m modity, o n l y i f , a n d so far a s , i t s possessor, the indi vidual whose l abo ur-power it is, offers it for sale, or sells it, as a
commo dity. In order that he may be able to do this, he m u s t have
it at h i s disposal, m us t be the untrammelled owner of his capacity for labour,
i.e .,
of his pers o n . 2 H e and the owner of money meet i n
the market, a n d deal with e a c h o t h e r a s on t h e basis of e q u a l righ ts,
w i t h this difference alone, that one i s buyer, t h e other seller; both,
therefore, e q u a l in the eyes o f the law. The continuance of this rela tion demands that the owner of the labour-power should sell it only
for a definite period, for it h e were to sell it rump and stump, once
for all, he would be selling himself, converting himself from a free
man into a slave, from a n owner of a commodity into a commod ity. He m u st constantly look upon his labour-power as his
own
property, his own commodity, and this he can only do by placing it
at the di sposal of the buyer temporarily, for a definite period of
t i m e . By this means alone can he avoid renouncing h is rights of
ownership over i t . 3
T h e second essen tial condition to t h e owner of money finding
labour-power in the market as
a commodity is this-that the
labourer instead of being in the position to sell commodities in
which his labour is incorporated, m u s t be obliged to offer for sale as
a commodity that very labour-power, which exists only i n h is l i v ing
s el f .
In order t h a t a m a n m a y be a b l e to sell c o m m odities other than
labour-power, h e must of course have the means of production, as
raw material, implements,
&C . N o boots can be made without
leather. H e requires also the means of subsistence. Nobody-not even "a musician of the future" -can live upon future products, or
upon use -values in an unfinished state; and ever since the first 2. In encyclopaedias of classical anti quities we find such nonsense as this that in the ancient world capital was fully developed, "except that the free labourer and a system of credit was wanting." Mommsen also, in his "His tory o f Rome," commits, in this re spect, one blunder after another. [MaTx] 3 . Hence legislation in various coun tries fixes a maximum for labour-con tracts. Wherever free labour is the rule, the laws regulate the mode o f termi nating this contract. In some States, particularly in Mexico (before the American Civil War, also in the terri tories taken from Mexico, and also, as a matter of fact, i n the Danubian prov inces till the revolution effected by K usa ) , slavery is hidden under the form of peollage. By means o f ad vances, repayable i n labour, which are handed down from generation to gen eration, not only the individual labour·
er, but his family, become, de ,,!-cto, t h e property of other. persons and their families. Juarez abolished peonage. The so-called Emperor Maximilian re-estab· Iished i t by a decree, which, i n the House of Representatives at Washing ton, was aptly denounced as a decree for the re-introduction of slavery into Mexico. " I may make over to another the use, for a limited time, of my par ticular bodily and mental aptitudes and capabilities ; because, in conse quence of this restriction, they are im pressed with a character of alienation with regard to m e a s a whole. But by the alienation of all my labour-time and the whole o f my work, I should be converting the substance itself, in other words, my general activity and reality, my person, into the property o f another." (Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, Berlin, 1 8 40, p . 1 0 4, § 6 7 . ) [MaTxl
338
The Critique of Capitalism
m oment of his appearance on the worl d ' s stage, man always h a s been , and m u s t still be a consumer, both before and while he is pro
ducing. In a society where all products assume the form o f com
modities, these commodities m u s t be sold after they h ave been pro duced, it is only after their sale that they can serve i n sati sfying the requirements of their producer. The time necessary for their sale is
superadded to that necessary for their productio n .
F o r the conversion ·of h i s money into capital, therefore, the
owner of money must meet in the market with the free labourer,
free in the double sense, th at a s a free man h e can dispose of h is labour-power as his own c o m m o d ity, and that on the other h a n d h e
has no o t h e r commodity f o r s a l e , is s h o r t of everything necessary
for the realisation of his labour-power.
The question why this free labourer confronts him i n the market,
has no interest for the owner of money, who regards the labour- m a r
ket as a branch of th e general m a rket for commodities. And for the
present it interests us just as l i t tl e . \Ve cling to the fact theoreti
cally, a s he does practically. One thing, however, is clear-Na ture does not produce on the one side owners of money o r commodities,
a n d on the oth e r men possessing nothing but their own labour
power. This relation has no natural basis, neither is its social basis
one that is common to all historical period s . I t is clearly the resu l t
o f a p a s t historical devel opment, t h e product o f m a n y economic rev
olutions, of the ex tinction o f a whole series of older forms of social producti o n . So, too, t h e economic categories, already discussed by us, bear the stamp of h istory. Definite h i s torical conditions are necessary that a
product may become a commodity. It must not be produced as the
immediate means of subsist ence o f the producer h i msel f . Had we gone further, and inquired under what circumstances all, or even
the m a j o rity of products take the f orm of c o m m o d ities, we should
have found that this can only h appen with production o f a very spe cific kind, capitalist productio n . Such an inquiry, however, would
have been foreign to the anal ysis of c o m m odities . Production and circulation of commod ities c a n take place, although the great mass
of the objects produced are intended for the immediate require ments of their producers, a re not turned into com modities, a n d con
sequently social production i s not yet by a long way d ominated in
its l ength and breadth by exchange-v a lue. The appearance o f p ro d ucts as commodities pre-supposes such a development o f the social
division of labour, that the separation of use-value from exchange value, a separation which first begins with barter, m u s t already h ave been completed. But such a degree of development is c o m m o n to
many forms of society, which in other respects p resent the most
varying h i s t o r i c a l features. On the other h a n d , i f we consider
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339
. -mon ey, its existence implies a definite stage i n th e exchange of com modities . The particular functions of money which it performs, eith er as the mere equivalent of commodities , or as means o f circu lation , or means of payment, a s hoard or a s universal money, point, acco rding to the extent and relative preponderance of the one func tion or the other, to very different stages in th e process of social production . Yet we know by experience tha t a circulation of com modities relatively p rimitive, suffices for the production of all these forms. Otherwise with capital . The h isto rical conditions of its exist
ence are by no means given with the mere circulation of money and c ommodities . I t can spring into life, only when the owner of the means of production and subsistence meets in the market with the free labourer selling h is labour-power. And this one historical condi tion comprises a world's history. Capital, therefore, announces from a new epoch in the proc es s of social
its first appearance production . 4
\V e m u s t n o w examine more closely t h i s peculiar commodity, labour-power. Like all others it has a value .5 How is that value determined? The value of labour-power is determined, as in the case of every other comm odity, by the labour-time n ecessary for the production, and consequently also the reproduction, of this special article. So far as it has value, i t represents no more than a definite quantity of the average labou r of society incorporated in it. Labour-power exists only as a capacity, or power o f the living individual . Its production consequently pre-supposes his existence. Given the individual, the production of labour-power consists in his reproduction of h i mself or h i s maintenance. For h i s maintenance h e requires a
given
quantity of the means of subsistence. Therefore the labour-time requisite for the production of labour-power reduces itself to that necessary for the prod uction of those means of su bsistence; in other words, the value of l abour-power is the value of the means of s ub sistence necessary for the maintenance of the labourer . Labou rc power, however, becomes a reality only by its exercise; it sets itself in action only by working. But thereby a definite quantity of h uman muscle, nerve, brain, &c., is wasted, and these require to be restored. This increased expenditure demands a larger incom e . 6 1£ the owner 4. The capitalist epoch i s therefore characterised by this, that labour power takes i n the eyes o f the labourer him self the form o f a commodity which is his property; h i s labour consequently becomes wage-labour. On the other hand, it is only from this moment that the produce o f labour universally be comes a commodity. [Marx] 5. "The value o r worth of a man, is as of all other t h ings his price-that
is to say, so much as would b e given for the use of his power." (Thomas. Hobbes, Leviathan, in Works, ed. Molesworth, London, 1 8 3 9-44, Vol. III, p. 7 6 . ) [Marx} 6. Hence the Roman Villicus, as over look er o f the agric ultural slaves, re ceived "more meagre fare than working slaves, because his work was l i ghter." ( Theodor Mommsen, Riimisches Ge schichte, 1 8 5 6 , p. 8 1 0 . ) [Marx]
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The Critique of Capitalism
of labour-power works to-day, to-morrow he must again be able to
repeat the same process in the same conditions a s regards health
and s t rength . His means of subsistence must therefore b e sufficient
to maintain him i n his normal state as a labouring i ndividual . His natural
wants, such
as foo d , cl othing, fuel, and h o u sing, vary
according to the climatic and other physical conditions of his coun
try. On the other h and, the n umber and extent of his so-called nec essary wants, as also the modes of satisfying t h e m , are themselves
the product of historical development, and depend therefore to a
great extent on the degree of civilization of a country, more particu larl y on the conditions under which, and consequently on the habits
a n d degree of comfort in which, the class of free labourers has been
forme d . 1 In contradistinction therefore to the case o f other com
modities,
there enters into
the determination
of the value of
labour-power a h i storical and moral elemen t . Nevertheless, in a
given country, at a given period, the average quantity of the means
of subsistence necessary for the labourer i s practically known .
The owner of labour-power is morta l . If then his appearance in
the market is to be continuous, and the continuous conversion of
money into capital assumes t his, the seller of labour-power m u s t
pepetuate himself, " i n t h e w a y t h a t every l i v i n g i ndivi d u a l perpetu ates h i m self , by procreati o n . " 8 Th e labour-power withdrawn from
the market by wear and tear and death, m us t b e contin ually
replaced by, a t the very least, a n equal amount of fresh labour power. Hence the sum of the means of subsistence nec e s sary for the production of labour-power must include the means necessary for the labourer's substitutes, i . e . , his children, i n order that this race of
peculiar commod ity-owners may perpetuate its appearance i n the market.9 I n order to m odify the h uman organism, so that it may acquire skill and h a n diness i n a given branch o f industry, a n d become
labour-power o f a special kind, a special education o r training is requisite, and th i s , o n i t s p a r t , costs an equivalent in commodities of
a
greater o r less amount. This amount varies according to the
more o r less complicated character of the labour -power. The expen ses of th is education ( excessively sma ll in the case o f ordinary
labour-power ) , enter pro tanto into the total value spent i n i t s pro d u c tion.
The value o f labour-power resolves itself into the value o f a
7 . Compare W. T. Thornton, Over Population and Its Remedy, London, 184 6 . [Marx] 8. Pett y. [Marx] 9. "Its [ labour's] natural price . , consists in such a quantity of neces sa r ie s and conforts of life, as, from the nature of the climate, and the habits .
of the country, are necessary to sup port the labourer, and to enable him to rear such a family as may preserve, i n the market, an undiminished supply of labour." ( R . Torrens, An Essay on the External Corn TTade, London, 1 8 1 5 , p. 6 2 . ) The word labouT is here wrongly used for labouT-power. [Marx]
Capital, Volume One
341
definite quantity of t h e m e a n s of subsistence. It therefore varies with the value of these means or with the quantity of labour requis ite for their production . Some of the means of subsistence, such as food a n d fuel, are con sumed daily, lind a fresh supply m u s t be provided daily . Other such a s clothes and furniture last for longer periods and require to be replaced only at longer interval s . One article must be bought or paid for· daily, another weekly, another quarterly, and so on. But in whatever w a y the sum total of these outlays m a y be spread over the year, they must be covered by the .average income, taking one day with another. If the total of the comm odities required daily for the production of labour-power=A, and those required weekl y = B , and those required quarterly= C, and so on, the daily average of these . . 3 6 5A + 5 2 B + 4 C+ &C . . . commodihes= Suppose that m this mass of 6 3 5 commodities requisite for the average day there are embodied six hours of social labour, then there i s incorporated daily i n labour. power half a day's average social labour, in other words, half a day's labour is requisite for the daily production of labour-power. This quantity of labo u r forms the value of a day's labour-power or the value of the labour -power daily reproduced. If half a day's average social labour is incorporated i n three shillings, then three shillings is the price corresponding to the value of a d a y ' s labour-power. If its owner therefore offers i t for sale at three shillings a day, its selling price i s equal to its value, and according to our supposition, our friend �loneybags, who i s intent upon converting his three shillings into capital, pays this value. The m inimum limit of the value of labour-power i s determined by the value of the commodities, without the daily supply of which the labourer cannot renew his vital energy, consequently by th e value of those means of subsistence that are physically indispensable. If the
price of labour-power fall to this minimum, it falls bel ow its value, since under such circumstances i t can be maintained and developed
only in a crippled state. But the value of every commodity is deter. mined by the labour-time requisite to turn it out so as to be norimil quality.
I t is a very cheap sort o f sentimentality which declares this method of determining the value of labour-power, a method p re scribed by the very nature of the case, to be a brutal method, and which wails with Ros si that, "To comprehend capacity for labo u r
( puissance de travail ) at t h e s a m e t i m e t h a t we make abstraction from the means of subsistence of the labourers during the process of production, is to comprehend a phantom ( etre de raison ) . \Vhen we speak of labour, or capacity for labour, we speak at the same time of the labourer and his means of subsistence, of labourer a n d
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The Critique of Capitalism
wages . " l When we speak of capacity for labour, we do not speak of labour, any more than when we speak of capacity for digestion, we speak of diges tion . The latter process requires something more than a good stomach . When we speak of capacity for labour, we do not abstract from the necessary means of subsistence. On the contrary, their value is expressed in its value. I f his capacity for labour remains unsold, the labourer derives no benefit from it, b u t rather h e will feel i t to be a cruel nature-imposed necessity that this capac ity has cost for its production a definite amount of the means of subsistence and that it will conbnue to do so for its reproduction . He will then agree with Sismondi : "that capacity for labour . . . is n othing unless it is sold . " 2 O n e consequence o f t h e peculiar nature of labour-power as a com modity is, that its use-value does not, on the conclusion of the con tract between the buyer and seller, immediately pass into the hands of the former. I ts V
Bru-
sor of the peculiar commodity, labour-power, is d e termined. The use-value which the former gets in exchange, manifests itself only i n t h e a c t u a l usufruct, in t h e consumption of the labour-powe r. T h e
money-owner buys everything necessary for this purpose, such a s r a w material, in t h e market, and pays for i t a t i t s full v a l u e . The cons umption of labour-power is at one and the s ame time the pro duction of c o m m o d i ties and of surplus-val u e . The consumption of
labour-power is completed, as in the case of every other c o m modity, outside the lim its of the market or of the sphere of circulation.
Accompanied by M r . :Moneybags and by the possessor of labo ur
power, we therefore take leave for a t i m e of this noisy sphere, where
everything takes place on the surface and i n view of all men, and follow them both into the hidden abode of production, on whose
threshold there stares us in the face " N o admittance except o n busi nes s . " Here w e shall see, not only h o w capital produces, but how
capital is p roduced. \Ve shall a t last force the secret o f p ro fi t making. This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is i n fact a very Eden of the i n n a t e rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Prop erty and Benth a m . Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a
commodity, say of labour-power, are constrained only by their own free will. They contract as free agents, and the agreement they c ome to, is but the form in which they give legal e xpression to their common will . Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, a s with a simple owner o f c o m modities, and they exchange
equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each d isposes only of wh a t i s his own. And Benth a m , because because each looks only to himself. The only force th a t brings them together and puts them in relation with each other, is the selfishness, the gain and the private interests of each . Each looks to himself only, and no one troubles
h i mself about the rest, and j us t beca use they do so, do they all, in accord ance with the preestablished h armony o f things, or under the auspices of an all-shrewd providence, work together to their m utua l advantage, for the common weal and in the interest of all.
On leaving this sphere of simple circulation o r o f exchange ci f
commodities, which furnishes t h e " F ree-t rader Vulgaris" with h i s
views a n d idea s , a n d with t h e standard b y which he judges a society based on capital and wages, we think we can perceive a change in
the physiognomy of our dramatis persona! . He, who before was the
money-owner, now strides in front as c a pitalist; the possessor of
labour-power follows as his labourer. The one with an air of i m port ance, smirking, intent on business; the other, timid and holding
back, like one who is bringing h i s own hide to market and h a s noth
ing to expect but-a h i ding.
3 44
The Critique of Capitalism
Part I I I . The P roduction of Absolute S u rplu s-Val ue CHAPTER VI I . T H E LAB O UR-PROCESS A N D THE P R O C E S S O F PROD UCING S URPLUS-VALUE
Section
1 .
The Labour-Process or the Production of Use-Values
The capitalist buys labour-power in order to use it; and labour power in use is labour itself . The purchaser of labour-power con sumes it by setting the seller of i t to work. By working, the latter
becomes actually, wh a t before he only was p o tentially, labour-power in action, a labourer. In order that his labour may re-appear in a commodity, he must, before all things, expend it on something useful, on something capable o f s atisfying a want of some sort.
Hence, what the capitalist sets the labourer t o produce, is a particu
lar use-value,
a
specified articl e . The fact that t h e production of
use-values o r goods, i s carried on under the control o f a cap italist
and on his behalf, does not alter the general character o f that pro duction. \Ve shall, therefore, in the first place, have to consider the
labour-process independently under given social conditions .
of the particu l a r form
i t assumes
Labour i s , i n the first place, a process i n which both m a n and Nature participate, and in which man of h i s own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between h i m s el f and Nature . He opposes himself to Nature a s one of her own forces, setting i n motion arms and legs, head a n d hands, the natural forces
of his body, i n order to appropriate Nature's productions i n a form adapte d t o his own wan t s � B y thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature/ He devel
ops his slumbering powers and compels them t o act in obedience to h is sway. We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms o f labour that remind us o f the mere a ni m al. An immeasura ble interval o f time separates the state o f things in which a man brings h i s labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from
tha t state in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stag e . We pre-s uppose labour in a form that stamps it a s exclusively
human . A spider conducts
operations that resemble those o f a weaver, a n d a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construc tion of h e r cells . B u t what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is thi s, that the architect raises his structure in imag ination before he erects it i n reality. A t the end of every la bour-
Capital, Volume One
345
- p rocess, we get it result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change o f
form in t h e material on which h e works, b u t h e a l s o realises a pur
pose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, a n d to
which he must subordinate his will . And this subordination is no mere momentary act. B esides the exertion o f the bodily organs, the
process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman's
will b e steadily in consonance with his p urpos e . This means close
a ttention. The less h e i s attracted b y the nature of the work, and the mode i n which ·it i s carried on, and the less, therefore , he enjoys i t as something which gives play to his bodily and mental
p owers, the m o re close his attention i s forced to b e . T h e elementary factors of t h e labour-process a r e ( 1 ) , t h e per
sonal activity of m a n ,
i.e.,
work itself,
(2),
the subj ect of t ha t
work, a n d ( 3 ) , i t s instrument s . T h e soil ( and this, economically speaking, includes wate r ) in the
virgin state in which i t supplies man with necessaries or the means
of subsistence ready to hand, exists independently o f him, and is the u n iversal s ubject o f h uman labour. All those things which labour merely separates from immediate connexion with their envi ronment, are subjects of labour spontaneously provided by Nature. Such are fish which we catch and take from their element, water,
timber which we fell in the v irgin forest, and ores which we extract
from their vein s . I f, on the other hand, the subject of labour h as , so to say, b e e n filtered through previous labo\lT, we c a l l i t r a w mate rial; such is ore already extracted a n d ready for washing. All raw
material is the subject of labour, but not every subject of labour is
ra w material : it can only become so, a fter i t h a s undergone some alteration by means o f labo ur.
An instrument of labour i s a thing , o r a complex of .things,
which the labourer interposes between himself and the subject of his l abour, and which serves a s the conductor o f his activity. He
makes use of the mechanical, physical, and chemical properties of
some substances in order to make other substances subserv ient to
his a i m s . 3 Leaving out o f consideration such ready-made means of subsistence a s fruits, in gathering which a man's own limbs serve as
the instruments o f his labour, the first thing of which the labourer possesses himself i s not the subject o f labour but its instrume n t .
T h u s N a t u r e becomes o n e of t h e organs of his activity, one t h a t he annexes to h i s own bodily organs, adding stature to himself in spite
3. "Reason i s j u s t as cunning as she i s pow erful. Her c unning consists princi pally i n her mediating activity, which, by causing objects to act and re-act on each other in accordance with their
own nature, i n t hi s way, without any direct interference in the process, car ries out reason's intentions." (Hegel : "Enzyklopadie, Erster Theil, Die Logik," Berlin, 1 8 40, p . 3 8 2 . ) [Mar%]
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The Critique of Capitalism
of the Bible . As the earth is his original larder, so too it is his orig i nal tool house. It supplies him, for instance, with stones for thr ow ing, grinding, pressing, cutting, &c . The earth itself is an ins tru _ ment of labour, but when used as such in agriculture implie s a whole series of other instruments and a comparatively high develop.
ment of labou r . No sooner does labour undergo the least develop
ment, than it requires specially prepared i n s trumen ts . Thus i n the oldest caves we find stone implements and weapons . In the earli est period o f human history domesticated annimals, i . e . , animals which
have been bred for the purpose, and have undergone modificatio ns by means of labour, play the chief part as instruments of labour
along with specially prepared stones, wood, bones, and shells . The use and fabrication o f instruments of labour, although existing in
the germ among certain species of animals, i s specifically character_
istic of the human labour-process, and Franklin therefore defin es man as a tool-making animal . Relics of bygone instruments of labour possess the same im portance for the investigation of extinct economic forms o f society, a s do fossil bones for the determination
o f extinct species o f animal s . I t is not the articles made, but how they are made, a n d b y what instruments, that enables us to distin
guish d ifferent economic epochs. Instruments of labour not only supply a standard of the degree of development to which human
labour has attained, but they are also indicators of the social condi tions under which that labour is carried on . Among the instruments
o f labour, those o f a mechanical nature, which, taken a s a whole,
we may call the bone and muscles o f production, offer much more
decided characteristics of a given epoch of production, than those
which, like pipes, tubs, baskets, jars, &c., serve only t o hold the materials for labour, which latter class, we may in a general way,
call the vascular system of production . The latter first begins to
play a n important part in the chemical industrie s .
I n a wider sense w e m a y include among t h e instruments o f
labour, in addition t o those things that a r e used f o r directly trans ferring labour to its subject, and which therefore, in one way or another, serve as conductors of activity, all
such
objects as are
necessary for carrying on the labour-process . These do not enter directly into the process, b u t without them i t is either impossible
for i t to take place at all, o r possible only to a partial extent. Once more we fi nd the earth to be
a
universal instrument of this sort, for
it furnishes a locus standi to the labourer a n d a field o f employ
ment for his activity. Among instruments that are the result of pre vious labour and also belong to this class, we find workshops, canals, roads, and so forth.
I n the labour-process, therefore, man 's activity, with the he lp o f
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347
���the
instruments of labour, effects an alteration, designed from t h e iiL c6m mencement, in the material worked upon . The process d i sap ! ' ea r s in the product; the latter is a use-value, Nature ' s material p
i
;, adapted by a change of form to the wants o f man . Labour has ; ,. . inco rporated itself with its subject : the former i s material ised, the ';i i e r transformed. That which in the labourer appeared a s move att '
' ment,
now appears in
the product a s
a fixed quality with o u t
motion . T h e blacksmith forges a n d t h e product i s a forging.
..
'. ' If we examine the whole process from the point of view o f its
. res ult, the product, it is plain that both the instruments and the subject o f labour, are means of production, and that the labour .
itsel f is productive labour.
Though a use-value, in the form o f a product, issues from the
labour-process, yet other use-values, products of previous labour,
enter into i t as means of production . The same use - value is both the product of a previous process, a n d a means of production in a
later proces s . Products are therefore not only results, but also essen
tial conditions o f labour. \Vith the exception of t h e extractive industries, i n which the
material for labour is provided immediately by Nature, such as
mining, hunting, fishing, a n d agriculture ( so far a s the latter i s con-
, fined to breaking up virgin soil ) , all branches o f industry manipu l a t e raw material, objects already fi l tered through labour, already products o f labour. Such is seed in agriculture. Animals and plants,
which we are accustomed to consider a s products o f Nature, are in their present form, not only products of, say last year's labour, but the result o f a gradual transformation, continued through many generations, under man's superintendence, a n d by means of his
labour. But in the great majority o f cases, instruments o f labour
show even. to the m o s t superficial observer, traces o f the labour of past ages.
Raw material may either form the principal substance o f a prod
uct, or i t may enter into its formation only as an accessory . An
accessory may be consumed by the instruments of labour, a s coal
under a boiler, oil b y a wheel, h a y by draft-horses, o r i t may be
mixed with the raw material in order to produce some modification
thereof, a s chlorine i n to unbleached linen, coal with iron, dye-stuff
with wool, or again, i t may help to carry on the work itself, a s in ' the case of the materials used for heati ng and lighting workshops . The distinc tion between principal substance a n d accessory vanishes
in the true chemical industries, because there none of the r a w material re - appears, i n its original composition, in the substance o f t h e product.
Every object po.ssesses various properties, a n d is thus capable of
348
The Critique of Capitalism
being applied to different uses . One and the same product may therefore serve as raw material in very different processes . Corn, for example, is a raw material for millers, starch-manufacturers, distill ers, and cattl e-breeders . It also enters as raw material into its own production in the shape of seed; coal, too, is at the same time th e product of, and a means of production in, coal-mining. Again, a pa rticular product may be used i n one and the same pl Ocess, both a s an instrument of labour and as raw material. Take, for instance, the fattening of cattle, where the animal is the raw material, and a t the same time an instrument for the production of manure . A product, though ready for immediate consumption, may yet serve as raw m a terial for a further product, as grapes when they become the raw material for wine . On the other hand, labour may give us its p roduct in such a form, that we can use it only as raw material, as is the case with cotton, thread, and yarn . Such a raw material, though itself a product, may have to go through a whole series of different processes : in each of these in turn, it serves, with constantly varying form, as raw material, until the last process of the series leaves i t a perfect product, ready for individual consump tion, or for use as a n instrument o f labo u r . Hence w e see, t h a t whether a use-value i s t o be regarded as raw material, as instrument of labour, or as product, this is determined enti rely by its function in the labour-process, by the position it there occupies : as this varies, so does its character. \Vhenever therefore a product enters as a means o f production into a new labour-process, i t thereby loses its character of product, and becomes a mere factor in the process . A spinner treats spindles only as implements for spinning, and flax only as the material that h e spins. O f course i t is impossible to spin without material and spindles; and therefore the existence of these things as p roducts, at the commencement o f the spinning operation, must be presumed : but in the p rocess itself, the fact that they are products of previous labour, is a m a tter of utter indifference; j u s t as in the digestive process, it i s of n o importance whatever, that bread is the produce of the previous labour of the farmer, the miller, and the baker. On the contrary, i t is generally by their i m perfections as products, that the means of production in any process assert themselves in their character of p ro d ucts . A blunt knife or weak thread forcibly remind us o f Mr. A., the cutler, o r Mr. B . , the spinner. I n the finished product the l abour by means o f which it has acquired its useful qualities is not palpable, has apparently vanished . A machine which does not serve the purposes of labour, i s useless. I n addi tion, it falls a prey to t h e destr � c tive influence o f
Capital, Volume One
349
natural forces . I ron rusts and wood rots. Yarn with which we nei ther weave nor knit,
is cotton waste d . Living labour m u st seize
upon these things and rouse them from their death-sleep, change the m from mere possi ble use-values i n to real and effective ones. Bathed in the fire of labour, appropriated as part and parcel of labour's organism, and, as i t were, made alive for the performance
of their functions i n the process, they are i n truth consu med, but
consumed with a p u rpose, as elementary constituents of new use values, of new p roducts, ever ready as means of subsistence for indi
vidual consumption, or as means
of production
for s o m e new
labour-proce s s . I f t h e n , o n t h e o n e h a n d , fi n i s h e d products a r e n o t o n l y results,
but als o necessary conditions, o f the labour-process, on the other han d , their a s s umption into that p rocess, their contact with living
labour, is the sale means by which they can be made to retain their
character of use-v alues, and b e utilised.
Labour uses u p its material factors, its subject and its instru
ments, consumes them, and is therefore a process o f consumption .
Such productive consumption is distinguished from individual con
sumption by this, that the latter uses u p p roducts, a s means o f sub
sistence for the living individual; the former, as means whereby alone, labour, the labour-power o f the living individual, i s enabled
to act. The product, therefore, o f individual consumption, is the consumer himself; the result of productive consumption, is a prod uct distinct from the consumer.
I n s o far then, a s its instruments and subjects are themselves
products, labour consumes products in order to create products, or in o t h e r words, consumes one set o f products b y turning t h e m i n t o
m e a n s of product ion for a n o t h e r s e t . B u t , j u s t a s in t h e beginning, the only particip;jtors i n the labour-process were man and the earth,
which latter exists ' independently of man, so even now we still employ i n the process many means of production, provided directly by Nature, that do not represent any combination of natural sub stances with human labour.
The labour-process, .resolved as above into its simple elementary
factors, is h u m a n action with a view to the production of use v alues, appropriation of natural substances to h uman requirements;
it i s the necessa ry condition for effecting
exchange o f matter
between man and Nature; i t is the everlasting Nature-imposed con d ition o f human existence, and therefore is independent of every social phase o f that existence, or rather, is common t o every such
phase. It was, therefore, not necessary to represent our labourer i n
connexion w i t h o t h e r labourers; man a n d h i s l a b o u r on one side,
Nature and its materials on the other, sufficed . As the taste of the
350
The Critique of Capitalism
porridge does not tell you wh o grew the oats, no m ore does this
simple process tell you of itself what are the social conditions under which it is taking place, whether under the slave-owner ' s brutal
lash, or the anxious eye of the capitalist, whether Cincinnatus car
ries it on in tilling his modest farm or a savage in killing wild ani
mals with ston e s .
L e t u s n o w return t o o u r would -be capitalist. We l e f t h i m j u st after he had purchased, in the open market, all the necessary f a c
tors of the labour-process; its objective factor�, the means of pro duction, a s well a s its subjective factor, labour-power. With the keen
eye o f a n expert, h e has selected the means o f production and the kind of l abour-power best adapted to his particular trade, be it spin
ning, bootmaking, or any other kind . He then proceeds to consume
the c o m m odity, the labour-power t h a t he h a s j us t bought, by ca us
ing the labourer, the im personation of that labour-power, to con s ume the means of production b y his labou r . The general character
o f the labour - process i s evidently not changed b y the fact, that the labourer works for the capitalist instead of for h im s elf; moreover, the particular methods and operations e mployed in bootmaking or
spinning are not i m mediately changed by the intervention o f the capital i st . He m u s t begin by taking the labour-power as he fi n d s it in the market, and consequently be satisfied with labour of such a kind as would be found in the period immediately preceding the rise of capitalists . Changes in the methods of production by the
subordination of labour to capital, can take place only at a later period, and therefore will have to b e treated o f in a later chapter. The labour-process, turned into the process b y which the capital
ist consumes labo ur-power, exhibits two c haracteristic phenomena .
First, the labourer works under the control of the capital ist to
whom his labo u r belongs; the capitalist taking good care that the
work i s done i n a proper m a n ner, and that the means o f production
a re used with intel ligence, so that there is n o unnecessary waste of
raw material, and no wear a n d tear o f the implements beyond what is necessarily caused by the work . Secondly, the product is the property of the capitalist and not
that o f the labourer, its i m m e d i a t e producer. Suppose tha t a capi talist pays for a d a y ' s labour-power a t its value; then the right to
use that power f o r a day belongs to h i m , j us t as much a s the right to use any other c o m modity, such as a h orse that h e has hired for the d a y . To the purchaser of a commodity belongs its use, and the
seller of labour-power, by giving his labour, does n o more, in reality, than part with the use-value that he has sold. F ro m the instant he
steps into the workshop, the use-value of his labour-power, and
the refore also its use, which i s labour, bel ongs to the capitalist. By the purchase o f labour - power, the capitalist incorporates labour, as
Capital, Volume One
351
a living ferment, with t h e lifeless constituents of the product . From his point of view, the labour-process is nothing more than the con sumption of the c o m m odity purchased, i . e . , of lab o u r-power; but t h i s consumption cannot b e effected except by supplying the labour-power with the means of production . The labour-process i s a process between things that the capitalist has purchased, things that have become his property. The product of this process belongs, therefore, to him, just as m uch as does the wine which is the prod uct o f a process of fermentation completed in his cel la r .
Section
2.
The Production of Surplus-Value
The product appropriated by the capitalist is a use-value, as yarn, for example, or boots . But, although boots are, in one sense, the basis of all social progress, and our capitalist is a decided "progres sist , " yet he does not manufacture boots for their own sake. Use ' value is, by n o means, the thing "qu'on aime pour lui-meme" in the production of com modities . Use-values are only produced by capitalists, because, and in so far as, they are the material substra tum, the depositories of exchange-val u e . O u r capitalist h a s two objects in view : in the first place, he wants to produce a use-value. that has a value in exchange, that i s to say, a n article destined to be sold, a commodity; and secondly, he desires to produce a commod ity whose value shall be greater than the s u m of the values of the commodi ties used in its production, that is, of the means of pro duction and the labour-power, that he purchased with his good m oney in the open market. His aim is to produce not only a use value, bu t a commod ity also; n o t only use-value, but value; not only value, but a t the same time surplus-value. I t must be borne in mind, tha t we are now dealing with the prod uction o f commodities, and that, u p to this point, we have only considered one aspect o f the process . J us t as commodities · are, a t the same time, use-values and values, so the pro,c ess o f producing them m us t be a labour-process, and a t the same time, a process of creating value. Let u s now examine production a s a creation of value. \Ve know that the value of each commodity is determined by the quantity of labour expended on and materialised in it, b y the working-time necessary, under given social condition s , for its produc tion . This rule also holds good i n the case o f the product that accrued to our capitalist, a s the resul t of the labour-process carried on for him. Assuming this product to be 1 0 lbs . o f yarn, our first step is to calculate the quantity of labour realised in it. For spinning the yarn, raw material is required; suppose in this
352
The Critique of Capitalism
case 1 0 lbs. of cotton . We have no need a t present to investigate the value of this cotton, for our capitalist has, we will assume, bought it at its full value, say of ten shillings . In this price the labour required for the production of the cotton is already expressed in terms of the average labour of society. We will further assume that the wear and tear of the spindle, which, for our pres ent purpose, may represent all other instruments o f labour employed, amounts to the value of 2 S . I f, then, twenty-four hours' labour, or two working-days are required to produce the quantity of gold represented by twelve shillings, we have h e re, to begin with, two days' labour already incorporated in the yarn . \Ve must not let ourselves be misled by the circumstance that the cotton has taken a new shape while the substance of the spin dle has to a certa in extent been used up. B y the general law of value , if the value of 40 lbs . of yarn
=
the value of 40 lbs. of cotton + the
value of a whole spindle, i . e . , if the same working-time is required to produce the commodities on either side of this equation, then 10 lbs. of yarn a re a n equivalent for 10 lbs . of cotton, together with one-fourth oJ a spindle. I n the case we are considering the same
working-time i s ma terialised in the 10 lbs . of yarn on the one hand, a n d i n the 1 0 lbs. of cotton and the fraction of a spindle on the . other. Therefore, whether value appears in cotton, in a s pin d le, or in yarn, makes no difference in the amount of that value. The spin dle and cotton, instead of resting quietly side by side, join together in the process, their forms are altered, and they are turned into yarn; but their value is no more affected by this fact than it would be i f they had been simply exchanged for their equivalent in yarn . The labour required 'for the production of the cotton, the raw material of the yarn, is part of the labour necessary to produce the yarn , and is therefore contained in the yarn . The same applies to the labour embodied in the spindle, without whose wear and tear the cotton could n ot b e spun . Hence, in determining the value of the yarn, or the labour-time required for its production, all the special processes carried on at various times and in different places, which were necessary, first to produce the cotton and the wasted portion o f the spindle, and then with the cotton and spindle to spin the yarn, may together b e looked on as different and successive p h a s e s of one and the same process . The whole of the labour in the yarn i s past labour; a n d it i s a matter of no importance that the operations necessary for the production of its constituent elements were carried on a t times which, referred t o the present, are more remote than the final oper ation of spinning. If a definite quantity of labour, say thirty days, is requisite to build a house, the total amount o f labour incorporated i n i t is not altered b y the fact that the work of the last day is done
Capital, Volume One
35 3
twenty-nine days later than that of the first. Therefore t h e labour contained in the raw material a n d the instruments o f labour can b e
t r e a t e d just as if i t w e r e l a b o u r expended in a n earlier s t a g e o f t h e spinning process, b e f o r e the l a b o u r of a c t u a l spinning commenced .
The values of the means of production, i . e . , the cotton and t h e
spindle, which val ues a r e expressed in the price o f tv';elve shill ings,
are therefore constituent parts o f the value of the yarn, or, in other
words, of the value o f the product.
Two conditions must nevertheless b e fulfilled . First, the cotton
and spindle m u s t concur in the production o f a use-value; they must in t h e present case become yarn . Value i s independent o f the
particular use-value by which i t i s borne, but i t must be embodied
in a use-value of some kin d . Secondly, the time occupied in the labour o f production must not exceed the time really necessary u nder the given social conditions o f the case . Therefore, i f no more
than 1 lb . o f cotton be requisite to spin
I
lb. o f yarn, care must be
taken that n o more than this weight of cotton i s consumed i n the production o f
I
lb . of yarn; and similarly with regard to the spindle.
Though the capitalist have a hobby, and use a gold instead of a
steel spindle, yet the only labour that counts for anything in the
v a l u e of the yarn i s that which would b e required to produce a steel
spindle, because n o more is necessary under the g i v en social condi tion s .
\V e n o w know what portion o f t h e value o f the y a rn i s owing to
the cotton and the spindle. It amounts to twelve shillings or the
value o f two days' work. The next point for o u r consideration is,
what portion o f the value o f the yarn i s a dded to the cotton b y t h e
labour o f the spinner.
We have now to consider this l a b o u r under a very different
aspect from that which i t had during the labour-process; there, we viewed it solely as that particular kind of human activity which
changes cotton into yarn; there, the more the labour was suited to
the work, the better the yarn, other circu mstances remaining the same. The l ab o u r o f the spinner was then viewed as specifically dif
ferent from other kinds of productive labour, different on the one hand in its special aim, viz . , spinning, d i fferent, on the other h a n d ,
in t h e special c h a r a c t e r of its operations, in the special n a t u r e of its means o f production a n d in the special use-value of its prod uct. For
the operation of spinning, cotton and spindles are a necessity, but for making rifled cannon they would b e of no use whatever. Here, on the contrary, where we consider the labour of the spinner only s o far as i t is value-creating, i.e., a source o f value, his labour d i ffers in no respect from the labour o f the man who bores cannon, or ( wh a t here more nearly concerns us ) , from the labour of the cot ton-planter and spindle-maker incorporated in the means of produc-
354
The Critique of Capitalism
tion. It is solely by reason of this identity, that cotton planti ng, spindle making and spinning, are capable of forming the comp o nent parts, differing only quantita tively from each other, of one whole, namely, the value of the yarn. Here, we have nothing more to do with the quality, the nature and the specific character of the labour, but merely with its quantity. And this simply requires to be calculate d . \Ve proceed upon the assumption that spinning is simple, unskilled labour, the average labour o f a given state of society. Hereafter we shall see that the contrary assumption would make no difference. \Vhile the labourer is at work, his labour constantly undergoes a trans'i ormation : from being motion, it becomes an object without motion; from being the labourer working, it becomes the thing pro duced. At the end of one hour's spinning, that act is represented by a definite qua n tity of yarn; in other words, a definite quantity of labour, namely th a t of one hour, has become embodied in the cotton. \Ve sa labour, i.e., the expenditure of his vital force by the
y
spinner, and not spinning labour, because the special work of spin ning counts here, only so far as it is the expenditure of labour power in general, and not in so far a s it is the specific work of the spinner.
.
In the process we are now considering it is of extreme i mpor tance, that no more time be consumed in the work of transforming the cotton into yarn than is necessary under the given social condi tions . If under normal,
a
i.e .,
average social conditions of production,
pounds o f cotton ought to be m a de into
b
poun ds of yarn b y one
hour's labour, then a day's labour does not count as 1 2 hours' labour unless 1 2 a pounds of cotton hav e been made into 1 2 b pounds of yam ; for in the creation of value, the socially necessary alone counts.
time
that is
Not only the labour, b u t also the raw material and the product now appear in quite a new light, very different from that in which we viewed them i n the labour-process p u re and simple . The raw material serves now merely as an absorbent of a definite quantity of labour. By this absorption it is in fact changed into yarn, because it is spun, because labour-power in the form of spinning is a dded to i t; but the product, the yarn, is now nothing more than a measure
of the labour absorbed by the cotton . If in one hour 1 � lbs . of
cotton can be spun into 1 � lbs . of yarn, then 1 0 lbs . of yarn indi cate the absorption o f 6 hours' labour. Defin ite quantities of prod
uct, these quantities being determined by experience, now represent nothing but definite quantities of labour, definite masses o f crystal li�ed labour-time. They are nothing more than the materialisation of so many hours o r so many days of social labour. We are here n o more concerned about t h e facts, that t h e labour
Capital, Volume One
355
'is the specific work of spinning, that i t s subject i s cotton a n d its
-,:; pro duct yarn, than we are about the fact th a t the subject itself is .. al ready a product a n d therefore r a w materia l . I f the spinner, ins tead o f spinning, were working in a coal mine, the subject of his . labour, the coal, would b e supplied by Nature; nevert heless, a .' · de fi nite quantity of extracted coal, a h u n dredweight for example,
wou l d represent a definite qua ntity of absorbed labou r . \Ve assumed, on t h e o c c a s i o n o f its sale, th a t t h e v a l u e o f a d a y ' s
lab our-power is three shillings, a n d that s i x h o u r s ' l a b o u r i s incorpo rated in that sum; and consequently that this amount of labour is
requisite to produce the necessaries o f life daily required on a n aver age by the labourer. If now our spinner by working for one hour,
can convert 1 � lbs . o f cotton into 1 2;3 lbs . o f y a rn , 4 i t follows that in six hours h e will convert
10
lbs . of cotton into
10
lbs . of
yarn . Hence, during the spinning process , the cotton absorbs six
hours' labour. The same quantity o f labour is also embodied in a piece of gold of the value of three shillings. C o nsequently by the
mere labour of spinning, a value of three shillings is added to the cotton.
Let u s now consider the total value o f the product, the 1 0 lbs . of
yarn . Two a n d a h a l f d a y s ' labour h a s b e e n embodied i n it, of
which two davs were contained in the cotton and in the substance
of the spindle worn away, and half a d a y was absorbed during the process o f spinning. This two and a half days' labour i s also repre sented by a piece of gold of the value of fifteen shilling s . Hence,
fifteen shillings i s a n adequate price for the 1 0 lbs. o f yarn, o r the
price o f one pound i s eighteenpence. Our capitalist stares i ll a s tonishment . The value of the product is exactly equal to the value o f the capital advanced. The value so advanced has not expanded, no surplus-value has been created, a n d
consequently m o n e y h a s not b e e n converted into capital . The price
of the yarn i s fifteen shillings, a n d fifteen shil1ings were spent in
the open market upon the constituent elements of the product, or,
what amounts to the same t h ing, upon the factors o f the l abour
process; ten shillings were paid for the cotton, two shillings for the substance o f the spindle worn away, and three shillings for · the
labour-power. The swollen value o f the yarn is o f n o avail, for i t is
merely the s u m o f the values formerly existing i n the cotton, the
spindle, and the labour-powe r : o u t o f such a simple addition of
existing values, n o surplus-value can possibly arise. These separate
values are now all concentrated in one thing; but so they were also in the s u m o f fifteen shillings, before it was split u p into three parts, by the p u rchase of the c o m m o d i tie s .
There i s in reality nothing very strange in this result. The value
4.
These fi gures are quite arbitrary. [Marx]
356
The Critique of Capitalism
of one pound of yarn being eighteenpence, if our capitalist buys
10
lbs . o f yarn in the market, h e must pay fifteen shillings for them . I t
is c l e a r that, whether a m a n b u y s his h o u s e r e a d y b u i l t , or g e t s i t b u i l t for h i m , in neither c a s e will t h e m o d e of acquisition increase the amount of money laid ont on the house . Our capitalist, who is at h o m e in his vulgar economy, exclaims :
" O h ! but I advanced my money for the express pu rpose of makin g more money . " The way to Hell is paved with good intentions, and
h e might just as easily have intended to make money, without pro
ducing at all . He threatens all sorts o f things . H e won ' t be caught napping again .
market,
instead
In
future h e will buy the commodities in the
o f manufacturing them himself.
But i f all his
brother capitalists were to do the s ame, where would he find his
c o m m o d ities in the market? And his money h e cannot eat. He tries
persuasion. " C o n s i d e r my abstinence; I might h ave played ducks and d rakes with the 1 5 shillings; but instead of that I con s u m e d it
productively, a n d made yarn with it." Very well, a n d by way o f reward he is now in possession o f g o o d yarn instead o f a b a d con science; and a s for playing the part of the miser; it would never do
for him to relapse into such bad ways as that; we have seen before to what results such asceticism leads . Besides, where nothing is, the
king has lost his rights; whatever may be the merit of his absti nence, there is nothing wherewith specially to remunerate it, because the value o f th e p ro d uct is merely the sum o f the values of the commodities tha t were thrown into the process o f production .
Let him therefore console h i mself with the reflection t h a t virtue is its own reward. B u t no, he becomes importun ate. He say s : "The
yarn . i s o f no u s e to m e : I produced it for sal e . " In t h a t case let
him sell it, or, still better, let him for the future produce only
things for satisfying his personal wants, a remedy that his physician
MacCulloch has already prescribed as infallible against an epi demic
of
labourer,"
over-production. he
He
asks, . "merely
now
with
gets
his
obstinate . . "Can
arms
and
legs,
the
produce
commodities out o f nothing? Did I not supply him with the mate
rials, by means of which, and in which alone, his labour could be
embodied? And as the greater part o f society consists o f such
n e 'er-do-wells, h ave I n o t rendered society incalculable service by my instruments of production, my cotton and my spindle, and not
o nly society, b u t the labourer also, whom in addition I .have pro vided w i t h the necessaries o f life? And a m I to be allowed nothing
i n return for all this service?" \Vell, b u t has not the labourer ren dered him the equivalent service of changing h i s cotton and spindle
into yarn? Moreover, there i s here n o question o f service. A service
i s nothing more than the useful effect of a use-value, b e it of a
c o m modity,
or be it
of labour. B u t
here
we are
dealing with
Capital, Volume One
357
exchange-value . The capitalist paid to the labourer a value of 3 shillings, and the labourer gave him back an exact equivalent in the value of 3 shillings, added by him to the cotton : he gave h i m value for value. Our friend, up to this time s o purse-proud, suddenly assumes the modest demeanour of his own workman, and exclaim s : "Have I myself not worked? Have I not performed the labour of superin tendence and of overlooking the spinner? And does not this labour, too, create val u e ? " His overlooker and his manager try to hide their smiles . Meanwhile, after a hearty laugh, he re-assumes his usual mien. Though h e chanted to us the whole creed of the economists, in reality, he says, he would not give a brass farthing for it. He leaves this and all such like subterfuges and juggling tricks to the professors of Political Economy, who are paid for it. He h imself is a practical man; and though h e does not always con sider wha t he says outside his business, yet i n his business he knows what h e is abou t . Let us examine the matter more closely. The value of a day's labour-power amounts to 3 shillings, because on our assu mption half a day's labou r i s embodied in that quantity of labour-power,
i.e . , because the means of subsistence that are daily required for the production o f labour-power, cost half a day's labour. But the past labour that i s embodied in the labour-power, and the living labour that it can call into action; the daily cost of maintaining it, and its daily expenditure in work, are two totally different things. The former determines the exchange-value o f the labour-power, the latter is its use-value. The fact that half a day's labour is necessary to keep the labourer alive during 2 4 hours, does not in any way prevent him from working a whole day. Therefore, the value of labour-power, and the value which that labour-power creates in the labour-process, are two entirely different magnitudes; and this difference o f the t w o values was what the capitalist had in view, when he was purchasing the labour-power. The useful qualities that labour-power possesses, and by virtue of which i t makes yam or boots , were to h i m nothing more than
a
conditio sine qua nO'n; for
in order to create value, labour must be expended in a useful manner. \Vhat really influenced him was the specific use-value which this com modity possesses of being a source not only of value,
but of more value than it has itself.
This is the special service that
the capitalist expects from labour-power, and in this transaction he acts in accor4ance with the "eternal laws" of the exchange of com modities. The seller o f labour-power, like the seller of a n y other commodity, realises its exchange-value, and parts with its use-value. He cannot take the one without giving the other. The use-value of labou r-power, or in other words, labour, belongs just a s little to its seller, as the use-value of oil after i t has been sold belongs to the
358
The Critique of Capitalism
dealer who has sold it. The owner of the m oney has paid the v a l u e
o f a day's labour-power; h i s , therefore, is the use of i t f o r a d a y ; a day's l a bour belongs to him . The circumstance, that on the one
hand the daily sustenance of labour-power costs o n l y half a day' s labour, while on the other hand the very same labour-power can
work during a whole day, that consequently the value which its use
during one day creates, is double what he pays for that u s e , this cir
cumstance is, without doubt, a piece of good luck for the buyer,
but by no means a n i n j ury to the sell e r .
O u r capitalist foresaw t h i s s t a t e of things, a n d t h a t w a s t h e cause o f h i s laughter. The l a bourer therefore finds, in the workshop, the means of production necessary for working, not only d u ring six, b ut
during twelve h ours . Just as during the six hours' p rocess our ' 1 0
lbs . of cotton absorbed s i x h ours' labour , a n d became 1 0 lbs . o f
yarn, s o now, 2 0 lbs . of cotton w i l l absorb 1 2 h o u rs' l a b o u r a n d be
changed i n t o 2 0 lbs . of yarn . Let us n o w examine t h e product of
this prolonged p rocess . There is now materia lised i n this 2 0 lbs . of
yarn the labour of five days, o f which four days are due to the cotton and the lost steel of the spindle, the remaining day having been ab sorbed by the cotton during the spinning process . Expressed
in gold, the labo u r o f five days is thirty shillings . This i s therefore the price of the 2 0 lbs . of yarn, giving, as before, eighteen pence as
the price of a p o u n d . B ut the sum of the values of the commodities
that entered into the process a mounts to 27 shillings. The value of
the yarn i s 3 0 shillings . Therefore the value o f the p r o d u ct i s 1 /9
greater than the value advanced for its production; 27 shillings have been transformed into 3 0 shillings; a s u rplus-value of 3 shillings has
been created. The trick has a t last succeeded; money has been con
verted into capita l .
Every condition o f the problem i s satisfied, while the laws that
regulate the exchange of c o m m odities, have b een i n n o way violated. Equivalent has been exchanged for equivalent. For the capitalist as
buyer paid f o r e a c h commodity, for the cotton, t h e spindle a n d the
labour-power, its full value. He then d i d what is done by every
purchaser of commodities; he consumed their use-va l u e . The con
s u m ption of the labou r-power, which was also the process of pro
ducing commodi ties, resulted in 2 0 lbs . of yarn, having a value of
30 shillings. The capitalist, form e rl y a buyer, now returns to market
a s a seller, of commodities. He sells his yarn a t eighteenpence a
pound, which is its exact value . Yet for all that he withdraws 3
shillings m o re from circulation than he originally threw into i t . This
metam orphosis, th i s conversion of money into capital, takes place both within the sphere of circulation and also outside i t ; w i t h i n the
circulation, because conditioned b y the purchase of the labour
power i n the market; outside the circulation, because what i s d o n e
Capital, Volume One
359
. within it is o n l y a stepping-stone to the production of surplus-value, a process which is entirely confined to the sphere o f production . Th u s "tout est p o u r Ie mieux dans Ie meilleur des mondes possi ble s . " B y turning his money into commodities that serve a s the ma te rial elements of a new product, and as factors i n the labour-process, b y incorporating living labour with th eir dead substance, the capi talist a t the same time converts value, i . e ., past, materialised, and dead labour into capital, into value big with value, a live monster tha t is fruitful and multiplie s .
I f we n o w co mpare t h e two processes of producing value a n d o f creating surplus-value, w e s e e that t h e latter i s nothing b u t t h e con tinuation of the former beyond a definite point. If on the one hand
the process be not carried beyond the poi n t , where the v a l u e paid by the capitalist for the labour-power is replaced by an exact equiv alent, i t is simply a p rocess of producing val ue; if, on the other
hand, it be continued beyond that point, i t becomes a process of creating surplus-value. If we proceed further, and compare the process of producing
\'alue with the labour-process, pure and simple, we find that the latter consists of the useful labour, the work, that produces use \'al ues . Here we contemplate the labour as producing a particular article; we view i t under its qualitative aspect a lone, with regard to its end and aim . B ut viewed as a value-creating process, the same labour-process presents itself under i ts q uantitative aspect alon e . Here i t i s a question merely of the time occupied b y the labourer in doing the work; of the period during which the labour-power i s use fully expended . Here, the commo dities that take part i n the proc ess, do not count any longer as necessary adj uncts of labour-power in the production of a definite, useful object . They count merely as depositories of s o m uch absorbed or materialised labour; th a t labour, whether previously embodied in the m e a n s o f production, or incorporated in them for the first time during the process o f the
action of labour-power, counts in either case only according to its
duration; i t amounts to s o many hours or days as the case may be. Moreover, only so much of the time spent i n the production of any article is counted, as, under the given social conditions, is necessary. The conseq uences of this are vario u s . In the first place, it
becomes necessary that the labour should be carried on under normal con ditions . If a self-acting m ule i s the implement i n general use for spinning, it would b e absurd to supply the spinner with a distaff and spinning wheel. The cotton too m ust not be s u ch rub bish as to cause extra waste in being worked, b u t must be of suitable quality. Otherwise the spinner would be found to spend more time i n producing a pound o f yarn than i s socially necessary, in which
36 0
The Critique of Capitalism
case the excess of time would create neither value nor m oney. B u t whether the material factors of the process are of normal qua lity O r n o t , depends not u p o n t h e labourer, but entirely u p o n the capital ist. Then again, the l abour-power itself must be of average e fficacy . I n t h e trade in w h i c h i t i s b e i n g employed, i t m ust possess the aver age skill, handiness a n d quickness prevalent in that t rade, a n d O ur
capitalist took good care to b uy labour-power of s uch n o rmal good n es s . This power m ust be applied with the average a m o u n t of exer tion and with the usual degree o f intensity; and the capitalist is as careful to see that this is done, a s that his workmen are not idle for a single moment. He has bought the use of the labour-power for a definite period, a n d he insists u pon his rights . He has no inten tion of being robbed . Lastly, and for this p u rpose our friend has a penal code o f his own, a]] wasteful consumption of raw material or instru ments of labour is strictly forbidden, because what i s so wasted, represents labou r superfluously expended, labour that does n ot count in the prod uct or enter into its value. \Ve now see, tha t t h e difference between labour, considered on the one h a n d as producing utilities, and on the other hand, as creating value, a d i fference which we discovered b y o u r analysis o f a c o m m odity, resolves itself into a distinction between two aspects of the process of prod uctio n . The process o f production, considered on the one h a n d as the unity of the labour-process and the process of creating value, is production o f commodities; considered on the other hand as the unity of the labour-process and the process o f producing surplus value, i t is the capitalist process o f production, o r capitalist produc tion o f commodities. \Ve stated, on a previous page, that i n the creation of surplus value it does not in the least matter, whether the labour appro priated by the capitalist be s i m pl e unskilled labOl�r of average qual ity o r more complicated unskilled l abo ur. All labour of a higher or m or e complicated character than average labour i s expenditure of labour-power o f a m ore costly kind, labour-power w hose p ro d uction has cost more time a n d labour, and which therefore has a higher value, than unskilled o r simple labour-power. This power being of higher value, its consumption is l abour of a h ighe r class, labour tha t creates in equal times proportionally higher values than unskilled labour does . \Vhatever difference in skill there may be between the labour of a spinner and that of a jeweller, the portion of his labour by which the jewe]]er merely replaces the value o f his own labour power, does not in any way differ in q uality from the a dditional portion by which h e creates s urplus-val ue. In the making of jewel lery, just as i n spinning, the surplus-value results only from a quan-
36 1
Capital, Volume One
titative excess of labour, from a lengthening-out of o n e a n d the
same labour-process, in the one case, o f t h e process of making
jewels, i n the other of the p rocess of making yarn . B u t on the other h a n d , in every process of creating val u e , th e reduction o f skilled labour t o average social l a bour, e. g . , o n e d a y o f skilled t o s i x days o f unskilled labour, i s unavoidable. \Ve therefore
save ourselves a s uperflu o u s operation, and simplify our analysis, by the assumption, that the labour of the workman employed by the capitalist is unski lled average l a b o u r .
* �, ':'
CHAPTER X THE \VORKING-DAY
Section
1 .
The Limits of the Workin g-Day
\Ve started with the supposition that labour-power is bought and
sold at its val u e . Its value, like that of all other commodities, is
determined by the working-time necessary to i t s produc tion. I f the
production
of
the
labourer takes u p
6
average
daily m e a n s
of
subsistence
hours, he must work, on the a verage,
of
6
the
h o urs
every day, to produce h i s daily labour-power, or to reproduce the value received a s the resu l t o f its sale. The necessary part of h is
working-day a m ounts to
6 hours,
and is, therefore,
caeteris paribus,
a
given quantity. B u t with this, the extent of the working-day itself is
not yet given. Let u s assume that t h e line A B represents the length o f the
necessary working-time, say
6
h o urs. If the l ab our be prolonged
or 6 hours beyond A B, we have \Vorking·day I . A -- B - C .
A
3
other lines :
Working-day I I . B C. --
--
1,
3,
W orking d a y I I I . A-- B --C . ·
representing 3 different working-days o f 7 , 9, a n d
12
h o urs . The
C o f the line A B represents the length of the surplus-labour. As the working-day i s A B + B or A C, it varies extension B
with the variable q u a n t i ty B C. Since A B i s constant, the ratio o f B C to A B c a n always b e calculated. I n working-day I , i t i s 1 / 6, i n working-day I I the
ratio
,
3/6,
i n working-day III,
surplus working-time
'
necessary working-time,
.
6/6
determmes
o f A B. Since, further, the rate of
.
the sur-
plus-value, the latter i s given by the ratio o f B C to A B. a m ounts in the 3 different working-days respectively to 1 6
2/3,
It 50
and 1 00 p e r cent. On t h e other h a n d , the rate o f surplus-value
alone would not give us the extent of the working-day. If this rate,
e. g .,
were 1 00 per cent, the working-day might b e of 8, 10,
1 2,
or
more hours . I t would indicate that the 2 constituent parts of the
working-day, necessary-labour a n d surplus-labour time, were equal
362
The Critique of Capitalism
in extent, but not how long each of these two constituent parts was . The working-day i s thus not a constant, b u t a variable quantity . One of its parts, certainly, is determined by the working-time required for the reproduction of the labour-power of the labourer himself. But its total amount varies with the duration of the sur
plus-labour. The working-day is, therefore, determinable, but is, per
se, indeterminate.
Alt hough the working-day is not a fixed, but a fluent quantity, it can, on the o t h e r hand, only vary within certain limits . The mini mum limit is, ho wever, not determinable; of course, if we make the extension line B C or the surplus-labour
= a,
we have a minimum
limit, i.e., the part of the day which the labourer must necessarily work for his own maintenanc e . On the basis of capitalist produc tion, however, this necessary labour can form a p a rt only of the working-day; the working-day itself can never be reduced to' this minimum . On the other h and, the working-day has a maximum limi t . I t cannot be prolonged beyond a certain point. This maxi mum limit is conditioned by two thing s . First, b y the physical bounds of labour-power. \Vithin the 2 4 ho urs of the natural day a man can expend only a definite quantity of his vital force. A h o rse, ·in like manner, can only work from day to day, 8 h ours . D uring
part of the day this force must rest, sleep; during another part the . m a n h a s to satisfy other physical needs, t o f e e d , w a s h , a n d clothe himse l f . B esides these p u rely physical limi tations, the extension of the working-day encounters moral ones. The labourer needs time for satisfying his intellectual and social wants, the extent and number o f which are conditioned by the general state of social advancement. The variation of the working-day fluctuates, there fore, within physical and social bounds. But both these limiting conditions are o f a very elastic nature, and allow the greatest lati tude . S o we find working-days of 8 , the most different lengths .
1 0,
1 2 , 1 4, 1 6, 1 8 h o urs,
i .e., of
The capitalist has bought the labour-power at its day-ra te. To him i t s use-value belongs during one working-day. H e has thus acquired the right to make the labourer work for him during one day. B u t , what i s a working-day? A t all events, less than a natural day. By h ow much? The capital ist has his own views of this
ultima Thule,
the necessary limit of
the working-day. As capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital . But capital has one singl e hfe impulse, the tendency to create value and surplus-value, to make its constant factor, the
means
of production,
absorb
the greatest possi ble
amount o f surplus-labour. Capita1 is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking
.. ::-� .
Capital, Volume One
363
�' "'
li ving labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks . The , . time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the
;.
capitalist cons u mes the labour - power he has purchased of him . . If the labourer consumes h i s disposable time for himself, he robs the capi talist . The capitalist then takes his stand o n the law o f the exchange of commodi ties . H e , like all other buye r s, seeks to g e t the g r eatest pos sible benefit out of the use-value of his commodity. Sudde n l y the voice af the labourer, which had been stifled i n the storm and stress o f the process o f production, rises : The commodity that I have sold to you differs from the crowd of o ther commodities, in that its use creates value, and a value greater than its own . That is why you bought it. That which on your side appears a spontaneous expansio n of capital, i s on mine extra expen diture of labour-power. You and I know on the market only one law, that of the exchange of commodities . And the consumption of the commodity belongs not to the seller who parts with it, but to the buyer, who acquires it. To you, therefore, belongs the use of my daily labour - po w er . B u t by means o f the price that you pay for
it each day, I m us t be able to reproduce it daily, and to sell it
agai n . A p art from natural exh a ustion through age, &c ., I must be able on the morrow to work with the same normal amount of force,
health and freshness as to - day. You preach to me constantly the gospel o f "saving" and "abstinence." Goo d ! I will, like a sensible saving owner, h usband my sale wealth, labour-power, and a bstain from all foolish waste o f it. I will e a c h day spend , set in m o tion,
p u t into action only as m u c h o f it as is compat ib l e w i t h its n ormal . duration, and healthy de velopmen t . By an unlim i ted extension o f
the working -day, you may in one d a y use up a quantity o f labour power greater than I can restore in three. What you gain in labo ur I lose in substance. The use of my labour - powe r and the spol i at i on of it are quite diff e rent th ings . I f the average time th a t ( doing a reasona ble a m o u n t of work )
an average labourer can live, is 3 0
years, t h e value o f m y labour-power, which you p a y m e from day to day is
1 36 5 x 30
or _1_ of its total value. But if you consume i fi n. 1 09 5 0
1 0 years, you pay me daily
;
of its total value, 3 50 i . e . , only 1 / 3 of its daily value, and you rob me, t herefore, every day of 2 1 3 of the value of my commodity. You pay me for one day's labour-power, whilst you use that o f 3 days . That is against o u r contract a n d t h e l a w o f exchanges. I demand, therefore, a work ing-day of normal length, a n d I demand it without any appeal to your heart, for in money matters sentiment is out of place . You may be a model citizen, perhaps a member of t h e Society for t h e
�
1 0 50
instead o f
364
The
Critique of Capitalism
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a n d in the odour of sanctity to
boot; but the thing that you represent face to face with me has no heart in its bre a s t . That which seems to throb there is my own heart-beating. I demand the normal working-day because I, like
every o th e r seller, demand the value of my commodity.
We see then, that, apart from extremely e l astic bounds, the
n a ture o f the exchange of commodities itself imposes n o limit to
the working-day, no limit to surplus-labour. The capitalist main
tains h i s rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the work ing-day as long as possible, and to make, whenever possible, two
working-days out of one. On the other hand, the peculiar nature of
t h e commodity s o l d implies a limit to i t s consumption by the pur
chaser, and the labourer maintains his right a s seller when he
wishes to reduce the working-day to one of definite normal dura
tio n . There is here, therefore, an antinomy, right against right,
both equally bearing the seal o f the law o f exchanges . Between
equal rights force decide s . Hence is i t that in the history of capital i s t production, the determination o f what i s a working-day, presents
itself a s the result o f a struggle, a struggle between collective capi
tal, i . e . , the class o f capitalists, a n d collective labour, i . e . , the work
ing-cl ass.
Section
2.
The G r e e d f o r Su rplus-Labour. Manufacturer and Boyard
Capital has not invented surplus-labour. Wherever a part of
society possesses the monopoly of the means o f production, the
labourer, free o r n o t free, m u s t add to the working-time necessary for his own maintenance an extra working-time i n order to produce
the means o f subsistence for the owners of the means o f produc
tion, whether this proprietor be the Athenian nobleman, Et rus
can theocrat, c i v i s Roman us, Norman baron, American slave-owner,
\Va llachian Boyard, modern landlord o r capitalist. I t is, however,
clear that in any given economic formation of society, where n o t t h e exchange-value b u t t h e use-va lue o f the p r o d u c t predominates,
s u rplus-labour w i l l be limited b y a given set o f wants which may be
greater o r less, a n d tha t here no boundless thirst for surplus-labour arises from the nature o f the production itself. Hence i n antiquity
over-work becomes horrible on l y when the object i s t o obtain
exchange-value i n its specific independent money-form; in t h e pro duction o f gold a n d silver. Compulsory working to death is here the
recognised form o f over-work. Only read Diodorus Sicul u s . Still
these are exceptions i n antiquity. But a s soon a s people, whose
production still m o v e s within t h e lower f o r m s of slave-labour, cor
vee-labour, &c., are drawn into the whirlpool of a n international
365
Capital, Volume One
market d ominated by the capitalistic mode of production, the s ale o f their products for export becoming their principal interest, the civilised horrors of over-work are grafted on the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom, &c. Hence the negro labour in the Southern States o f the American Union preserved something o f a patriarchal char actor, so long as production was chiefly directed to immediate local consump tion . B ut in proportion, as the export of cotton beca m e of vital interest to these states, the over-working of the negro and sometimes the using up of his life in 7 years o f labou r became a factor in a calculated and calculating system . It was no longer a question of obtaining from him a certain quantity of useful prod ucts . It was now a question o f production o f surplus-labour itsel f . So w a s it a l s o with t h e corvc�e, e .g . , i n t h e Danubian Principalities ( now Roumania ) . The comparison of the greed for surplus-labour in the D a n ubian Principalities with the same greed in English factories has a special interest, because surplus-labour in the cor vee has an independent and palpable fo rm . Suppose the working-day consists of 6 hours of necessary labour, and 6 hours o f surplus-labour. Then the free labourer gives the cap italist every week 6 X 6 or 3 6 hours o f surplus-labour. It is the same
a s if h e worked 3 days in the week for himself, and 3 days in the week gratis for the capitalist. B ut this i s not evident on the surface . Surplus-labour and necessary labour glide one into the other. I can, therefore, express the same relationship by saying,
e.g . ,
that the
labourer in every minute works 30 seconds for himself, and 3 0 for the capitalist, etc. It is otherwise with the corvee. The necessary la bour which the \-\T allachian peasa nt does for his own mainte nance i s distinctly marked off from his surplus-labour on behalf of the B oyard . The one h e does on his own fiel d , the other on the seignorial estate . B o th parts of the labour-time exist, therefore, independently, s ide by side one with the o th e r . I n the corvee the surplus-labour is accurately marked o ff from the necessary labour . This , however, can make no difference with regard to the quantita tive relation of surplus-labour to necessary labour. Three days' sur plus-labour in the week remain three days that yield n o equivalent to the labourer h i m self, whether it be called corvee or wage-labour. B ut in the capitalist the greed for surplus-labour appears in the straining after a n unlimited extension of the working-day, i n the B oyard more simply i n a direct hunting after days o f corvee. The Factory Act of 1 8 5 0 now in force ( 1 8 6 7 )
*
*
*
allows for the
average working-day 1 0 hours, i.e., for the first 5 days 1 2 hours from 6 a . m . to 6 p . m . , including V2 an hour for breakfast, a n d an
h our for dinner, and thus leaving 1 O V2 working-hours, and 8 hours for Saturday, from 6 a . m . to 2 p . m . , of which Y2 an hour is sub-
366
The Critique of Capitalism 60
tracted for breakfast.
working-hours are left, l O Y2 for each of
the first 5 days, 7Y2 for the l a s t . Certain guardians of these laws are appointed, Factory Inspectors, directly under the Home Secretary, whose reports are published half-yearly, by order of Parliamen t . They g i v e regular a n d official statistics of t h e capitalistic greed for surplus-labour. Let us l isten, for a moment, to the Factory Inspector s . "The fra)ldulent mill-owner begins work a quarter of an hour ( sometimes
more, sometimes less ) before 6 a .m ., and leaves o ff a quarter o f an hour ( sometimes more, s ometimes less ) after 6 p . m . H e takes 5 m i n u tes from the beginning and from the end of the hal f hour
nominally allowed for breakfast, and 10 minutes a t the beginning and end o f the hour nominally allowed for dinner. He works for a quarter of an hour ( sometimes more, sometimes less ) after 2 p . m . o n Saturday. Thus h i s gain isBefore 6 a . m . , After 6 p . m . ,
Or 5 hours a n d 40 minutes weekly, which . multipl ied by 50 working weeks in the yea r ( allowing two for holidays and occasional stop
p a ge s ) is equal to 27 working-days . " "Five minutes a day's increased work, multiplied b y weeks, are
equal to two and a half days of produce i n the year." "An additional hour a day gained by small instalments before 6 a . m ., after 6 p .m . , and at the beginning and end of the times nomi nally fixed for meals, is nearly equivalent to working 1 3 months i n the year. " * * * These " small thefts" of capital from the labourer's meal and recreation time, the factory inspectors a l s o designate as "petty pil ferings of minutes , " "snatching a few minut es," or, as the labourers technically called them, "nibbling and cribbling at meal-times . " I t i s evident that i n this atmosphere the -f ormation o f surplus value by surplus-labour, i s no secre t . "If you allow me," said a highly respectable master to me, "to work only ten minutes in the
day over-time, you put one thousand a year in my pocket." "Moments a r e t h e elements o f p ro fi t . " Nothing is f r o m t h i s p o i n t o f view more characteristic! t h a n the
Capital, Volume One
367
designation of the workers who work full time as "full-timers, " a n d th e children u n d er 1 3 w h o a r e o n l y allowed to work 6 h o u rs a s "half-timers . " T h e worker i s h ere nothing m o r e than personified labour-time . A l l individual distinctions are merged in those o f "full-timers" a n d "half-timers . "
Section
3.
Branches of English Industry Without Legal Limits to Exploitation
We have hitherto considered the tendency to the extension of the working-day, the were-woIf's hunger for surplus-labour in a department where the m on strous exactions, not surpassed, says an English bourgeois economist, by the cruelties of the Spaniards to the American red-skins, caused capital at last to be bound by the chains of legal regulations . Now, let us cas t a glance at certain branches of production in which the exploitation o f labour i s either free from fetters to this day, or was so yesterday . Mr. B roughton Charl ton, county magistrate, declared, as chair man of
a
meeting held at the Assembly R ooms, Nottingham, on
the 1 4 th of Jan uary, 1 8 60, "th a t there was an amount of privation and suffering a m ong that portion af the population connected with the lace trade, unknown in other parts o f the kingdom, indeed, in the civilised world . . . . Children of nine o r ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two, three, o r four o ' clock in the m o rn ing and compelled to work for a bare subsistence until ten , eleven, o r twelve at night, their limbs wearing away, their frames dwin dling, their faces whitening, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone-like torpor, utterly h orrible to c o n template . . . . \Ve are not surprised t hat Mr. Mallett, or any other manufacturer, should stand forward and protest against discussion . . . . The system, as the Rev . Montagu Valpy describes it, i s one o f unmitigated slavery, socially, physically, m o rally, and spiritually . .
. . Wha t can · be
thought of a town which holds a public meeting to petition that the period of labour for men shall be diminished to eighteen hours a day? . . . We declaim against the Virginian and Carolinian cot ton-planters. Is their black-market, their lash, and their barter of human flesh m o re detestable than this slow sacrifice of humanity which takes place in order that veils and collars may be fabricated for the benefit o f capitalists?"
* * *
The manufacture of lucifer matches dates from 1 8 3 3 , from the discovery of the method of applying phosphorus to the match itself. Since 1 84 5 this manufacture has rapidly developed in Eng la n d , and has extended especially amongst the thickly populated parts o f London a s well a s in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Norwich, Newcastle and Glasgow. With it has spread the
368
The Critique of Capitalism
form of lockjaw, which a Vienna physician in 1 84 5 d i s covered to
be a disease peculiar to lucifer-matchmakers. H al f the workers are
children under thirteen, a n d young persons under eighteen . The manufacture is on account o f its unhealthiness a n d unpleasantness
in such bad odour that only the most miserable part of the labour
ing class, half-starved widows and so forth, deliver u p their children to it, "the ragged, half-starved, untaught childre n . " Of t h e witnesses that Commissioner \Vhite examined ( 1 8 6 3 ) ,
'2 70 were under 1 8, 5 0 under
1 0,
1 0 only 8 , a n d 5 only 6 years o l d .
A range o f the working-day from
l'2
to
1 4 or 1 5 h o u r s , n i ght
labour, irregular meal-times, meals for the mo s t part taken in the very workrooms that are pestilent with phosphorus . Dante would
have found the w orst horrors of his Inferno s u rpassed i n this manu facture. * * *
No branch of industry in England ( we do not take into account
the making of bread by machinery recently introduce d ) h a s pre served u p to the present day a method o f production so archaic,
so-as we see from the poets o f the Roman E m pire-pre-christian, a s baking. But capital, a s was said earlier, is a t first indifferent a s to
the technical character of the labour-process; it begins by taking it
j u s t as it finds i t .
T h e incredible adulteration o f bread, especially in London, was
first revealed by t h e House o f Commons Committee " o n the adul teration o f articles o f food" ( 1 8 5 5- 5 6 ) , a n d Dr. H assa l l ' s work, "Adulterations detecte d . " The consequence of these revelations was
the Act o f August 6th, 1 8 6 0 , " for preventing the adulteration of articles o f food and drink," a n inoperative law, a s i t naturally shows
the tenderest consideration for every Free-trader who determines by the buying or selling of adultera ted c o m m o d i ties
" to
turn
an
honest penny . " The Committee itself formulated more o r less naively its conviction that Free-trade meant essentially trade with
adulterated, o r as the English ingeniously p ut it, "sophisticated" goods . I n fact this kind o f sophistry knows better than Protagoras
how t o make white black, and black white, and better than the Eleatics how to de monstrate appearance.
ad oculos
that everything i s only
At all events the Committee had directed the attention of the
public to its "daily bread , " and therefore t o the baking t ra d e . At the same time in public meetings and i n petitions t o Parliament rose the cry o f the London j o u rneymen bakers against their over work, &c. The cry was s o urgent that Mr. H . S. Tremenheere, also a member of the Commission of 1 8 6 3 several times mentioned, was appointed R o y a l Commissioner o f I nquiry . His report, together with the evidence given, roused not the heart o f the public b u t its
s tomach.
Englishmen, always well u p i n the Bible, knew well
36 9
Capital, Volume One
enough that man, unless by elective grace a capitalist, or landlord, or sinecurist, i s commanded to eat h i s bread i n the sweat of his brow, but they d i d not know that h e had to eat daily in h i s bread a certain quantity of h uman perspiration mixed with the discharge o f a bscesses, cobwebs, d e a d black-beetles, an d p u t r i d German yeast, without counting alum, sand, and other agreeable mineral ingre dients . \Vithout any regard to his holiness, Free-trade, the free bak ing-trade was therefore placed under the supervision of the State inspectors ( Close of the Parliamentary session of
1 86 3 ) ,
and by the
same Act of Parliament, work from 9 in the evening to
5
in the
morning was forbidden for jo urneymen bakers under 1 8 . The last clause speaks volumes a s to the over-work i n this old-fashioned, homely line of busines s . "The work of a London journeyman baker begins, a s a rule, a t about eleven a t n ight. A t t h a t h o u r he 'makes t h e dough, '-a labo rious p rocess, which lasts from half a n hour to three quarters of an hour, according to the size o f the batch o r the labour bestowed upon it. He then lies down upon the kneading-board, which is also the covering of the trough in which the dough is 'made'; and with a sack under him, and another rolled up a s a pillow, he sleeps for about a couple of hours . H e is then engaged i n a rapid and contin uous labour for about five h o u rs-throwing out the dough, 'scaling i f off,' moulding it, putting it into the oven, preparing and baking rolls and fancy bread, taking the batch bread out of the oven, and up into the s h op, &c., &c. The temperature of a bakehouse ranges from about 75 to upwards of 90 degrees, and in the smaller bake houses approxima tes usually to the higher rather than to the lower degree of heat. When the business o f making the bread, rolls, &c . , i s over, that of i t s distribution begins, a n d a considerable propor
tion of the journeymen in the trade, after working hard in the
manner described during the night, are upon their legs for many hours during the day, carrying baskets, o r wheeling hand-carts, a n d sometimes again i n the bakehouse, leaving off work a t various hours
between 1 a n d 6 p . m . according to the season of the year, or the amount and nature of their master's business; while others are again engaged in the bakehouse i n 'bringing out' more batches until late in the afternoon . . . . During what is called ' the London seaso n , ' the operatives belonging to the ' full-priced' bakers a t the West End o f the town, generally begin work at 1 1 p . m . , and are engaged in making the bread, with one or two short ( sometimes very short ) intervals of rest, up to
8
o ' clock the next morning.
They are then engaged all day long, up to 4 , 5, 6, and as late a s 7 o'clock in the evening carrying out brea d , or sometimes in the after noon in the bakehouse again, assisting in the biscuit-baking. They may have, after they have done their work, sometimes five o r six,
370
The Critique of Capitalism
sometimes only four or five hours' sleep before they begin agai n . On Fridays they always begin sooner, some about ten o 'clock, an d continue in s o m e cases, at work, either in making or delivering the bread up to 8 p . m . on Saturday night, but more generally up t o 4
or 5 o'clock, Sunday morning. On Sundays the men m u s t atte nd twice or three times during the day for an h o u r o r two to make prep arations for the next day's bread . . . . The men employed by the underselling masters ( wh o sell their bread under the 'full price,' and who,
as already pointed out, comprise three-fourths of the
London bakers ) have not only to work on the average longer hours , but their work is almost entirely confined to the bakehous e . The underselling m a s ters generally sell their bread . . . . i n the shop. If they send it o u t, which is not common, except as supplying ' chan dler ' s shops, they usually employ other hands for that p u rpose. It is not their practice to deliver bread from house to house. Towards the end o f the week . . . the men begin on Thursday night a t
10
o' clock, and continue on with only slight intermission until late on Saturday evenin g . " Even t h e bourgeois intellect understands t h e position of the "underselling" masters . "The unpaid labour of the men was made .
the source whereby the competition was carried o n . " And the "full-priced" baker denounces his underselling competitors to the C ommission o f Inquiry as thieves of foreign labour and adultera tors . "They only exist now by first defrauding the public, and next getting 1 8 h o u rs ' work out of their men for 1 2. hours' wages . " The adulteration of bread and t h e formation of a class o f bakers that sells the bread below the full price, date from the beginning of the 1 8th century, from the time when the corporate character of the trade was l o s t, and the capitalist in the form of the miller or fl o u r-factor, rises behind the nominal master baker. Thus was laid the foundation o f capitalistic product ion i n this trade, o f the unlimited extension o f the working-day and o f night-labour, al though the latter only since 1 8 2. 4 gained a serious footing, even in London .
After what has j ust been said, it will be understood that the Report of the Commission classes journeymen bakers among the sh ort-lived la bourers, who, having by good luck escaped the normal decimation of the children o f the working-class, rarely reach the age of 4 2. . Nevertheless, ,the baking trade is always overwhelmed with applicants. The sources o f the supply o f these labour-powers to London are Scotland, the western agricul tural districts o f England, a n d Germany.
*
*
*
From the motley crowd of labourers of all cal lings, ages, sexes, that press on u s m o re busily than the souls of the slain on Ulysses,
371
Capital, Volume One . .. on
.\
whom-wi thout
referring
to
the
Blue
books
under
their
a rm s-we see at a glance the mark o f over-work, let us take two more figures whose striking contrast proves that before capital all men are alike-a milliner and a blacksmith . In the last week of June, 1 8 6 3 , all the London daily papers published a paragraph with the "sensational" heading, "Death from simple over-work . " It dealt with the death o f the milliner, Mary Anne Walkley,
20
years of age, employed in
a highly
respectable dressmaking establishment, exploited by a lady with the pleasant name o f Elise. The old, often-told story, was once more rec oun ted . This girl worked, on a n average, 1 6 1/2 hours, during the se ason often 3 0 hours, without a break, whilst her failing labour power was revived by occasional supplies of sherry, port, o r coffee. It was just now the height of the season . I t was necessary to con ju re up in the twinkling of an eye the gorgeous dresses for the noble ladies bidden to the ball in honour of the newly-imported Princess of \Vales. Mary Anne Walkley had worked without inter mission for 2 6 1/2 hours, with 60 other girls, 3 0 in one room, that only afforded 1/3 of the cubic feet of air required for them . At night, they slept in pairs i n one o f the stifling holes into which the bedroom was divided by partitions of board . And this was one of the best millinery establishments in London. Mary Anne· Walkley fell ill on the Friday, died on Sunday, without, to the astonishment 6f Madame Elise, having previously completed the work in h a n d . T h e doctor, M r . Keys, called too l a t e to t h e death-bed, d u l y bore witness before the coroner's j u ry that "l\bry Anne Walkley h a d died f r o m l o n g h o u r s of work i n a n over-crowded workroom, and a too small and badly-ventilated bedroom . " In order to give the doctor a lesson in good manners; the coroner's jury thereupon brought in a verdict that "the deceased h a d died of apoplexy, but there was reason to fear that her death had been accelerated by over-work in an over-crowded workroom, &c . " "Our white slaves,"
cried the Morning Star, the organ o f the Free-traders, Cobden and. B right, "our white slaves, who are toiled into the grave, for the·
most part silently pine and die . " " I t is n o t i n dressmakers' rooms that working to death is the order of the day, but in a thousand other places; in every place I had almost said, where 'a thriving business' has to be done . . . . \Ve
will take the blacksmith as a type . If the poets were true, there is no m a n so hearty, so merry, as the blacksmith; he rises e arly and
strikes his sparks before the sun; he eats and drinks and sleeps as no other man . \Vorking in moderation, he is, in fact, in one of the best of human positions, physically speaking. B ut we follow him into the city o r town, a n d we see the stress o f work on that strong
372
The Critique of Capitalism
man, and what then is his position in the death-rate of his country . In Marylebone, blacksmiths die at the rate of 3 1 per tho usand per a n n u m , or 1 1 above the mean of the male adults of the country i n its entirety. T h e occupation, instinctive almost as a p o rtion of h um a n art, unobjectionable as a branch of h u man industry, is made by mere excess o f work, the destroyer of the man . H e can strike so many blows per day, walk so many steps, breathe so many breaths, produce so much work, and live an average, say of fifty years; he is made to strike so many more blows, to walk so many more steps, to breathe so many more breaths per day, and to increase altogether a fourth of his life. He meets the effort; the result is, that producin g for a limited time a fourth more work, he dies at 3 7 for
Sectio n
4.
50."
Day and Night Work. The Relay System
Constant capital, the means o f production, considered ·from the standpoint of the creation of surplus-value, only exist to absorb labour, and with every drop of labour a proportional quantity of surpl us-labou r . \Vhile they fail to do this, their mere existence causes a relative loss to the capitalist, for they represent during the time they lie fallow, a useless advance of capital . And this loss becom es positive and absolute as soon as the intermission of their employment necessitates additional outlay at the recommencement o f work. The prolongation of the working-day beyond the limits of the n a t u ral day, into the night, only acts as a palliative . It quenches only in a slight degree the vampire thirst for the living blood of labour. To appropriate labour during all the 24 hours of the day is, therefore, the inhe�ent tendency of capitalist production . But as it is physically impossible to exploit the same individual labour power constantly during the night as well as the day, to overcome this physical hindrance, an alt.ernation becomes necessary between the workpeople whose powers are exhausted b y day, and those who are used u p by night. This alternation may be effect.ed in various ways; e .g., it may be so arranged that part of the workers are one week employed on day-work, the next week on n ight-work. I t is well known that this relay syst.em, this alterna tion of two sets of workers, held full sway in the full-blooded youth-time df the Eng lish cotton m a n ufacture, a n d that a t the present time i t still flour ishes, among others, in the cotton spinning of the Moscow district.
This 24 hours' process of production exists to-day a s a system i n
m a n y of t h e branches of industry o f Great B r i t a i n that a r e still "free, " i n the blast-furnaces, forges, plate-rolling mills, and other metallurgical establishments i n England, \Vales, and S cotl a n d . The working-time here includes, besides the 24 h o u rs of the 6 working-days, a great part also of the 24 hours of S u n day. The
Capital, Volume One
3 73
workers consist of men and women, adults and children of both sexes. The ages of the children and young persons run through all i ntermediate grades, from 8 ( in some cases from 6) to 1 8 . I n some branches a f indus try, the girls and women work thro ugh the night together with the males . * * *
Section 5 . The Struggle for a Normal Working-Day. Compulsory Laws for the Extension of the Working-Day from the Middle of the 1 4 th to the End of the 1 7 th Century "\Vhat is a working-day? What is the length of time during which capital may consume the labour-power whose daily value it buys ? How far may the working-day be extended beyond the work i ng-time necessary for the reproduction of labour-power itsel f?" I t h a s b e e n seen t h a t to these questions capital replies : t h e work ing-day contains the full 24 hours, with the deduction of the few hou rs of repose without which l abour-power absolutely refuses its services again . Hence it is self-evident that the labourer is nothing else, his whole life through, than labour-pow.er, that therefore all his disposable time is by nature and law labour - time, to be devoted to the self-expansion o f capital. Time for education, for intellectual development, for the fulfilling of social functions and for social intercourse, for the free-play o f his bodily and mental activity, even the rest time of Sunday ( and that in a country of Sabbatar ian s ! ) -moonshine!
But in its blind
unrestrainable passion, its
were-wolf hunger for surplus-labour, capital overst.eps not only the moral, but even the merely physical maximum bounds of the work ing-day. It usurps the time for growth, develop ment, and healthy maintenance o f the body. It steals the time required for the con sumption o f fresh air and sunlight. It higgles over a meal-time, incor porating it where possible with the process of production itself, s o t h a t f o o d is given to t h e labourer as to a m e r e m e a n s of production, as coal i s supplied t o the boiler, grease and oil t o the machinery.. It reduces the sound sleep needed for the restoration, reparati on, refreshment o f the bodily powers to j u s t so many h o urs of torpor a s the revival o f a n organism, absolutely exhausted, renders essential . It is not the normal maintenance of the labour-power which is to determine the limits of the working-day; it is the greatest possible daily expenditure of labour-power, no matter how diseased, compul sory, and painful i t may be, which is to determine the limits o f the labourers' period of repose. Capital cares nothing for the length of life of labour-power. A l l that concerns it is simply and solely the maximum of labour-power, that can be rendered fluent in a working d ay. It attains this end by shortening the extent of the labourer's life, as a greedy farmer snatches increased produce from the soil by
3 74
The Critique of Capitalism
robbing it of its fertility. The capitalistic mode of production ( essentially the product ion of surplus-value, the absorption of surplus-labour ) , produces thus, with the extension of the working-day, not only the deterioration of h u m a n labour-power by robbing it of its n o rmal, moral and physi cal, conditions of development and function . It produces also the premature exha ustion and
death
of this l ab o u r-power itself.
It
extends the labourer's time of production during a given period by shortening his actual life-ti m e . B u t t h e value of t h e labour-power includes t h e value of t h e com modities necessary for the reproduction of the worker, or for the keeping up of the working-class. If then the unnatural extension of the working-day, that capital necessarily strives after i n its unmeas ured passion for self-expa n s i o n , shortens the length of life of the individual labourer, and therefore the duration of his labour-power, the forces used up h ave to be replaced at a m ore rapid rate and the sum of the expenses for the reproduction of labo ur-power will be greater; just as in a mach i n e the part of its value to b e reproduced every day i s greater the m o r e rapidly the machine i s worn o u t . It would seem therefore that the interest of capital itself points i n the d i rection of a normal working-day. The slave-owner buys his labourer as h e buys his horse. I f he loses h i s slave, h e loses capital that can only be restored by new outlay in the slave-mart. B ut " the rice-grounds of Georgia, or the swamps o f the Mississippi may b e fatally i n jurious to the h uman constitution; but the waste o f h uman l i f e which the cultivation of these districts necessitates, i s not so great that i t cannot be repaired from the teeming preserves of Virginia and Kentucky. Considera tions of economy, moreover, which, under a natural system, afford some security for human t reatment by identifying the master's interest with the slave's preservation, when once trading i n slaves is practised, become rea sons for racking to the uttermost the toil of the slave; for, when his place can at once be supplied from foreign preserves, the d u ration of his life becomes a matter of less moment '
than its productiveness while i t last s . It is accordingly a maxim of slave management, i n slave-importing countries, that the m ost
effective economy is that which takes out o f the human chattel in t h e shortest space of time t h e utmost amount o f exertion it is capa ble of putting forth. It is in tropical culture, where a n n u al profits often equal the whole capital o f plantations, th a t negro life is most recklessly sacrifice d . I t is the agriculture O'f the 'Vest I n dies, which has been for centuries prol i fi c of fabulous wealth, that has engulfed millions of the African race . It i s in C uba, at this day, whose reve n u e s are reckoned by m i l l i ons, and whose planters are princes, tha t w e s e e in t h e servile class, t h e coarsest fare, t h e m o s t exhausting
Capital, Volume One
3 75
an d unremitting toil, a n d even the absolute destruction of a por ' tion of its numbers every year . " . Mutato nomine d e t e fabula narratur. 5 F o r slave-trade read . labour-market, for Kentucky and Virginia, Ireland and the agricul tural distri
ployed from 1 5 , 000 to 20,000 peopl e. I n the year 1 8 6 1 the popu lation alone of the town centres of this industry in Great Britain numbered 1 0 1 , 3 02 . "The cotton trade has existed for ninety years . . . . I t has existed for three generations of the English race, and I believe I may safely say that during that period i t has destroyed nine generations o f factory operatives . " * * * \Vhat experience shows to the capitalist g.enerally is a constant excess o f population, i . e . , an excess in relation to the momentary requirements o f surplus-labour-absorbing capital, although this excess is made up o f generations of human beings stunted, short lived, swiftly replacing each other, plucked, so to say, before m a tur ity. An d , indeed, experience shows to the intelligent observer with
what swiftness and grip the capitalist m ode of production, dating, historically speaking, only from yesterday, has seized the vital power of the people by the very root-shows how the degeneration of the industrial population is only retarded by the constant absorption of primitive and physically uncorrupted elements from the country shows how even the country labourers, in spite o f fresh air a n d the principle of natural selection, that works s o powerfully among st them, and only permits the survival of the strongest, are already beginning to die off. Capital that has such good reasons for denyi ng the sufferings of the legions of workers that surround it, is in prac tice moved a s m uch and a s little by the sight of the coming degra dation and final depopulation of the human race, as by the prob able fall of the earth into the s u n . In every stock-jobbing swindle
every one knows that s o me time o r other the crash m ust come, but every one hopes that it may fall on the head o f his neighbour, after h e himself has caught the shower of gold and placed i t i n safety. Apres moi Ie deluge! is the watchword o f every capitalist and of
every capitalist nation. Hence Capital is reckless o f the health length
o f life o f the labourer,
unless under
or
compulsion from
5. "The name being changed, this story is about you" ( Horace, Satires, I , f, 6 9-7 0 ) . � R . T.]
3 76
The Critique of Capitalism
society. To the out-cry as to the physical and mental degradation, the premature death, the torture of over-work, it answers : Oug ht these to trouble us since they increase our profits? But looking at things as a whole, all this does not, indeed, depend on the good or ill will of the individual capitalist. Free competition brings out the inherent laws of capitalist production, in the shape of external coer cive laws having power over every individual capitalist. The establish m ent of a normal working-day is the result of cen turies of struggle between capitalist and labourer. The history of this struggle shows two opposed tendencies. Compare, e.g., the English factory legislation of our time with the English Labour Statutes from the 1 4 th century to wen into the middle o f the 1 8th.
Whilst the modern Factory Acts compulsorily shortened the work ing-day, t.he earlier statutes tried to lengthen it by compulsion. Of course the pretensions of capital in embryo-when, beginning to a quantum sufficit of sur
grow, it secures the right of absorbing
plus-labour, not merely by the force of economic relations, but by the help of the State-appear very modest when put face to face with the concessions that, growling and struggling, it has to make in its adult condition. It takes centuries ere the "free" labourer, thanks to the development of capitalistic p roduction, agrees, i.e., is compelled by social conditions, to sell the '!V hole of his active life, his very capacity for work, for the price of the necessaries of life, his birthright for a mess of pottage. Hence it i s natural that the lengthening of the work-day, which capital, 'from the middle of the 1 4th to the end of the 1 7 th century, tries to i m pose by State measures on a d ul t labourers, approximately coincides with the shortening of the working-day which, in the second half o f the 1 9 th century, has here and there been effected by the State to pre vent the coining of childre n ' s blood into capita l . That which to-day,
i n the State of Massachusetts, until recently the freest State of the North-American Republic, has been p rocla i m e d a s the statutory
e.g.,
limit of the labour of children under 1 2, was in England, even in the middle of the 1 7 th century, the normal working-day of able bodied artisans, robust labourers, athletic blacksmiths. * * *
Part IV. Production of Relative Surplus-Value C H A P T E R XII . THE C ONCEPT OF RELATIVE SURPLUS VALUE That portion of the working-day which merely produces a n equ iv alent for the value paid by the capitalist for h is l abour-p ower, has, u p to this point, been treated b y us as a consta n t magnitude, and such in fact it is, under given conditions of production a n d a t a
Capital, Volume One
3 77
giv en stage in the economic development of society. Beyo n d this, hi s necessary labour-time, the labourer, we saw, could cont inue to work for 2, 3, 4, 6, &c. , hours . The rate of surplus-value and the length o f the working-day depended on the magnitude of this p ro lo ngation . Though the necessary labour-time was constant, w e saw, on the other hand, that the total working-day was variable . Now suppose we have a working-day whose length, and whose apportion men t between necessary labour and surplus-labour, are given . Let the whole line a c, a
---
b-c represent, for example, a work
ing-day of 1 2 h o urs; the portion of a b 1 0 hours of necessary labour, and the p o rtion b c 2 hours of surplus-labour. How now can
the p roduction of surplus-value b e increased, i.e., how can the sur
plus-labour be prolonged, w ithout, o r independently of, any prolon gation of a c? Although the length of a c is given, b c appears to be capable of prolongation, i f not by extension beyond its end c, which is also the end of the working-day a c, yet, at all events, by p ushing back its starting-point b in the direction of a . Assume that b'-b in the line
a
b' b c is equal to half o f b c a
b/-b
c
-
or to one hour's labour-time. If now, in a c, the working-day of
12
hours, we move the point b to b', b c becomes b' c; the surplus labour increases b y one half, from 2 hours to 3 hours, although the working-day remains as before a t 1 2 hours. This extension of the surplus labour-time from b c to b' c, from 2 hours to 3 h ours, is, however, evidently impossible, without a simultaneous contraction of the necessary labour-time from a b into a b', from 1 0 hours to 9 hours . The prolongation of the s u rplus-labour would correspond to a shortening of the necessary labour; or a portion of the labour-time previously consumed, in reality, for the labourer's own benefit, would be converted into labour-time for the benefit o f the capital ist. There would be a n alteration, not i n the length of the work ing-day, but in its division into necessary labou r-time and surplus labour-time. On the other hand, it is evident that the duration of the sur plus-labour is given, when the length of the working-day, and t1le value of labour-power, are given. The value of labour-power, i . e . , t h e labour-time requisite t o p roduce labour-power, determines t h e labour-time necessary for the reproduction o f that value. If one working-hour b e embodied in sixpence, and the v a l u e o f a day's labour-power be five shillings, the labourer m us t work 10 hours a day, in order to replace the value paid by capital for his labour power, or to produce an equivalent for the value of his daily neces sary means of subsistence. Given the value of these means of sub
sistence, the value of his labour-power is given; and given the value
37 8
The Critique of Capitalism
of his labour-power, the duration of his necessary l a bour-time is given . The duration of the surplus-labour, however, is arrived at, by subtracting the necessary labour-time from the total working-day. Ten hours subtracted from twelve, leave two, and it is not easy to see, how, under the given conditions, the surplus-labour can possi bly be prolonged beyond two h ours . No doubt, the capitalist can, instead o f five shilli ngs, pay th e labourer four shillings and sixpence or even les s . For the reproduction of this value of four shillings an d sixpence, nine h o u rs ' labour-time would su ffice; and consequently three h ours of surplus-labour, instead of two, would accrue to the capitalist, and the s u rplus-value would rise from one shilling to eighteenpence . This result, however, would be obtained only by lowering the wages o f the labourer below the value of his labour powe r . With the four shillings and sixpence which he produces in nine h o u rs , he commands one-tenth less of the necessaries o f life than before, and consequently the proper reproduction of h is labour-power is crippled. The surplus-labour would in this case be prolonged only by an overstepping of its n o rmal limits; its domain would be extended only by a usurpation of part of the domain of necessary labour-time.
Despite the
important
part
which
this
method plays i n actual practice, we are excluded from considering it in this place, by our assumption, that all commo dities, including l abour-power, are bought and sold at their full value. Granted this, i t follows that the labour-time necessary 'for the production of labour-power, o r for the reproduction of its value, cannot b e less ened by a fall in the labourer's wages below the value of his labour-power, but only by a f a l l in this value itself . Given the length of the working-day, the prolongation of the s u rplus-labour mus t o f necessity originate in the curtailment o f the necessary labour-time; the latter cannot arise from the form e r . In the exam ple we have taken, i t is necessary that the value o f labour-power should
actually
fall by one-tenth,
in
order
that
the necessary
labour-time may be diminished b y one-tenth, i . e . , from ten h ours to nine, and in order that the s u rplus-labour may consequently be prolonged from two hours to three. . S uch a fall in the value of labour-power impli es, h owever ; that the same necessaries of life which were formerly produced in ten h ours, can now be produced in nine h o urs . But this is impossible
with o u t an increase in the productiveness o f labour. For example, suppose a shoemaker, with given tools, makes in one working-day of twelve h ours, one pair of boots . If h e must make two pairs in the same time, the productiveness of h is labour must b e doubled; a n d
t h i s can n ot be d o n e , except by an alteration in his tools o r in h is mode of working, or in both. Hence, the conditions of production, i . e . , his mode of p roduction, and the labour-process itself, must be
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revolutionised. By increase in the productiveness of labour, we mean, generally, an alteration in the labour-process, of such a k i n d as to shorten the labour-time sociall y n ecessary f o r t h e production of a commodity, and to endow a given quantity of labour with the power o f producing a greater quantity o f use-value. Hitherto in treating of surplus-value, arising from a simple prolongation of the working-day, we have assumed the mode o f production to b e given a nd invariable. B u t when surplus-value has to be produced by the conversion of necessary labour into surplus-labour, it by n o means s uffices for capital to take over the l abour-process in the form under which i t has been historically handed down, and then simply to prolong the duration of that process . The technical and social con ditions of the process, and cons equently the very mode of produc tion must be revolutionised, before the productiveness of labour can be increased . B y that means alone can the value of labour power be made to sink, and the portion of the working-day neces sary for the reproduction of that value, be shortened . The surplus-value pro duced by prolongation of the working-day, I call
absolute surplus-value .
On the oth er hand, the surplus-value
arising from the curtailment of the necessary labour-time, and from the corresponding alteration i n the respective lengths of the two components o f the working-day, I call relative surplus-value. I n order to effect a fall i n the valu e of labour-power, the increase in the productiveness o f labour must seize upon those branches of industry, whose products determine the value o f labour-power, and consequently e i t h e r belong to the class of customa r y m e a ns o f s ub sistence, or are capable of supplying the place of those means . B ut the value of a commodity is determined, not only by the quantity of labour which the labourer directly bestows upon that commod ity, but also by the labour contained in the means of product ion . For instance, the value of a pair of boots depends, not only on the cobbler's labour, but also on the value of the leather, wax, thread,
&c. Hence, a fall in the value of labour-power is also brought about
by an increase in the p roductiveness of labour, and by a correspond
ing cheapening of commodities in those industries which supply the
instruments of labour and the raw material, tha t form the material elements of the constant capital required for producing the nece s saries of life. B u t an increase in the productiveness of l ab o u r in those branches of industry which supply neither the n ecessaries of life, nor t h e m e a n s o f production f o r such necessa ries, leaves the value o f labour- p ower undisturbed. The cheapened commodity, o f c ou rse, causes only a p ro tanto fall in the value o f labour-power, a fall proportional t o the extent of tha t commodity'S employment in the reproduction o f labour-power. Shirts, for instance, are a n ecessary means of subsistence, but are
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380
only one out of many. The totality of the necessaries of life con sists, however, of various commodities, each the product of a dis tinct ind ustry; and the value of each of those comm odities enters as a component part into the value of labour-power. This latter value decreases with the decrease of the labour-time necessary for its reproduction; the total decrease being the sum of all the different curtailmen ts of labour-time effected in those various and distinct industries. This general result is treated, here, as if it were the immediate result directly aimed at in each individual case. \Vhen ever
an
individual
capital ist
cheapens
shirts,
for
instance,
by
increasing the productiveness of la bour, he by no means necessarily aims at reducing t h e value of labour-power and shortening, pro tanto, the necessary labour-time. But it is only in so far as h e ulti mately contribti tes to this result, that he assists in raising the gen eral rate of surp lus-value. The general and n ecessary tendencies of capital must be distinguished from their forms of manifestation. It i s not our intention t o consider, here, the way in which the laws, immanent in capitalist production, manifest themselves in the movements o f individual masses of capital, where they assert them selves as coercive laws of competition, and are brought h o m e to the m ind and consciousn ess of the individual capitalist as the directing motives of h is operations. B ut this much is clear; a scientific analy sis of competition is not possible, before we have a conception of the inner nature of capital, just as the apparent motions of the heavenly
bod ies
are
not
intelligible
to
any b u t h i m ,
who
is
acquainted with their real m o tions, m o tions which are n o t directly perceptible by the senses. Neverth eless, for the better comprehen sion of t he production of relative surplus-value, we may add the fol lowing remarks, in which we assu me nothing more than the results we have already obtained . If one h our's labour is embodied in sixpence, a value of six shil lings will be produced in a working-day of
12
with the prevailing productiveness o f labour,
h o urs . Suppose, that 12
articles are pro
duced in these 12 ho urs. Let the value of the means of production used up in each article be sixpence . Under t h ese circumstances, each article costs one shilling: sixpence for th e value of the means o f production, and sixpence for the value newly added i n working with those means. Now let some one capitalist contrive to double the productiveness of labour, and to p roduce in the working-day of 12 h ours, 24 instead of 12 such articles . The value of the m eans of
production remaining the same, the va lue of each article will fall t o ninepence, mad e u p o f sixpence f o r the va l u e o f t h e m eans of pro duction and threepence for the value newly added by the l abour. Despite the doubled productiveness of labour, the day's l a bour cre ates, as before, a new value of six shillings and no more, which,
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381
however, is now spread over twice as many articles. Of this value each article now has embodi ed in it 1/24th, instead of 1/12th, three-p ence instead of sixpence; or, what amounts to th e same thing, only half an hour's instead of a whole hour's labour-time, is now added to the means of production while they are being transformed into each article. The individual value of these articles is now below their social value; in other words, they have cost less labour time than the great bulk of the same article produced under the average social conditions. Each article costs, on an average, one shilling, and represents 2 hours of social labour; but under the altered mode of production it costs only ninepence, or contains only
1
Yz hours' labour. The real value of a com mod ity is, however,
not its individual value, but its social value; that is to say, the real value is not measured by the labour-time that the article in each individual case costs the producer, but by the labour-time socially required for its production. If therefore, the capitalist wh o applies the new method, sells his commodity at its social value of one shil l ing, he sells it for t hreepence above its individual value, and thus realises an e xtra su rplus-value of threepence. On the other hand, the working-day of 12 hours is, as regards him, now represented by 24 articles instead of 12. Hence, in order to get rid of the p rod uct of one working-day, the demand must be double what it was,
i.e., the market must becom e twice as extensive. Other things b eing eq ual, his commodities can command a more e xtended market only by a d i minution of their prices. He will therefore sell them above their individual but under their social value, say at ten pence each . By this means he still squeezes an extra surplus-value of one penny out of each. This augmentation of su rplus-value is pocketed by him, whether his commodities belong or not to the class of neces sary means of subsistence that participate in determining the gen eral value of labour-power. Hence, independ ently of this latter cir cumstance,
there is a motive for each
individual
capitalist to
cheapen his commodities, by increasing the prod uctiv eness of labour. Nevertheless, even in this case, the increased production of sur
plus-value arises from the curtailment of the necessary labour-time,
and from the corresponding prolongation of the surplus-labour. Let the necessary labour-time a mount to
10
ho urs, the value of a day's
labour-power to five shillings, the surplus labour-time to 2 h ours, and the daily surplus-value to one shilling. B ut the capitalist now produces 24 articles, which h e sells at tenpence a-piece, making twenty shillings in all. Since the value of the m eans of production is twelve shillings, 14 2/5 of these articles merely rep lace t h e con stant capital advanced. The labour of the 12 h ours' working-day is represented by the remaining 9 labour-power is five shillings,
3/5 articles. Since the price o f the 6 articles represent the necessary
382
The Critique of Capitalism
labour-time, and 3 3/5 articles the surplus-labour. The ratio of the necessary labour to the surplus-labour, which under average social conditions was 5: 1 , is now only 5 : 3. The same result may be arrived at in the following way. The value of the. product of the working-day of 1 2 hours is twenty shillings. Of this sum, twelve shillings belong to the value of the means of production, a value that merely re-appears . There remain eight shillings, which are the expression in money, of the value newly created during the work ing-day. This sum is greater than the sum in which average social labour of the same kind is expressed : twelve hours of the latter labour are expressed by six shillings only. The exceptionally produc tive labour operates as intensified labour; it creates in equal periods of time greater values than average social labour of the same kind. But our capitalist still continues to pay as before only five shillings as the value of a day's labour-power. Hence, instead of 10 hours, the labourer need now work only 7 4/5 hours, in order to reproduce this value. His surplus-labour is, therefore, increased by 2 4/5 hours, and the surplus-value he p roduces grows from one, into three shillings. Hence, the capitalist who applies the improved method of production, appropriates to surplus-labour a greater portion of the working-day, than the other capitalists in the same trade. He does individually, what the whole body of capitalists engaged in producing relative surplus-value, do collectively. On the other hand, however, this extra surplus-value vanishes, so soon as the new method of production has become general, and has conse quently caused the difference between the individual value of the cheapened commodity and its social value to vanish . The law of the d�termination of value by labour-time, a law which brings under its sway the individual capitalist who applies the new method of production, by compelling him to sell his goods under their social value, this same law, acting as a coercive law of compe tition, forces his competitors to adopt the new method. The gen eral rate of surplus-value is, therefore, ultimately affected by the whole process, only when the increase in the productiveness of labour, has seized upon those branches of production that are con nected with, and has cheapened those commodities that form part of, the necessary means of subsistence, and are therefore elements of the value of labour-power. The value of commodities is in inverse ratio to the p roductive ness of labour. And so, too, is the value of labour-power, because it depends on the values of commodities. Relative s u rplus-value is, on the contrary, directly proportional to that productiveness. It rises with rising and falls with falling productiveness. The value of money being assumed to be constant, an average social working-day of 12 hours always produces the same new value, six shillings, n o
Capital, Volume One
383
matter h ow this sum may be apportioned between surplus-value and wages. But if, in consequence of increased productiveness, the value of the necessaries of life fall, and the value of a day's labour-power be thereby reduced from five shillings to three, the surplus-value increases from one shilling to three. Ten hours were necessary for the reproduction of the value of the labour-power; now only six are required. Four h ours have been set free, and can be annexed to the domain of surplus-labour. Hence there is imma nent in capital an inclination and constant tendency, to heighten the productiveness of labour, in order to cheapen commodities, and by such cheapening to cheapen the la bourer himself. The value of a commodity is, in itself, of no interest to the capi talist . \Vhat alone interests him, is the surplus-value that dwells in it, and is realisable by sale. Realisation of the surplus-value neces sarily carries with it the refunding of the value that was advanced. Now, since relative surplus-value increases in direct proportion to the development of the productiveness of labour, while, on the other hand, the value of commodities diminishes in the same pro portion; since one and the same process cheapens commodities, and augments the surplus-value contained in them; we have here the solution of the riddle: why does the capitalist, whose sole concern is the production of exchange-value, continually strive to depress the exchange-value of commodities? A riddle with which Quesnay, one of the founders of Political Economy, tormented his oppo nents, and to which they could give him no answer. "You acknowl edge," he says, "that the more expenses and the cost o f labour can, in the manufacture of industrial products, be reduced without injury to production, the more advantageous is such reduction, because it diminishes the price of the finished article. And yet, you believe that the production of wealth, which arises from the labour of the workpeople, consists in the augmentation of the exchange "alue of their products." The shortening of the working-day is, therefore, by no meanS what is aimed at, in capitalist production, when labour is econo� mised by increasing its productiveness. It is only the shortening of the labour-time, necessary for the production of a definite quantity of commodities, that is aimed at. The fact that the workman, when the productiveness of his labour has been increased, produces, say 10 times as many commodities as before, and thus spends one tenth as m uch labour-time on each, by no means prevents him from continuing to work 12 hours as before, nor from producing in those 12 hours 1,200 articles instead of 120. Nay, more, his work ing-day may be prolonged at the same time, so as to make him pro duce, say 1,400 articles in 14 hours. In the treatises, ther.efore, of economists of the stamp of MacCulloch, Ure, Senior, and tutti
384
The Critique of Capitalism
quanti, we may read upon one page, that the labourer owes a debt of gratitude to capital for developing his productiveness, because. the necessary labour-time is thereby shortened, and on the next page, that h e must prove his gratitude by working in future for 15 hours instead o f 10. The object of all development of the produc tiveness of labour, within the limits of capitalist production, is to shorten that part of the working-day, during which the workman must labour for his own benefit, and by that very shortening, to lengthen the other part of the day, during which he is at liberty to work gratis for the capitalist. How far this result is also attainable, without cheapening commodities, will appear from an examination of the particular modes of producing relative surplus-value, to which examination we n ow proceed. C HAPTER
XI I I .
CO-OPERATION
Capitalist production only then really begins, as we have already seen, when each individual capital employs simultaneously a com paratively large number of labourers; when consequently the labour-process is carried on on an extensive scale and yields, rela tively, large quantities of products. A greater number of labourers working together, at the same time, in one place ( or, if you will, in the same field of labou r ) , in order to produce the same sort of commodity under the mastership of one capitalist, constitutes, both historically and logically, the starting-point of capitalist production . \Vith regard t o the mode o f production itself, manufacture, i n its strict meaning, is hardly to be distinguished, in its earliest stages, from the handicraft trades of the guilds, otherwise than by the greater number of workmen simultaneously employed by one and the same individual capital. The workshop of the medireval master handicraftsman is simply enlarged. * * * We saw in a former chapter, that a certain minimum amount of capital was necessary, in order that the number of labourers simul taneously employed, and consequently, the amount of surplus value produced, might suffice to liberate the employer himself from manual labour, to convert him from a small master into a capitalist, and thus formally to establish capitalist production. \Ve now see that a certain minimum amount is a necessary condition for the conversion of numerous isolated and independent processes into one combined social process. \Ve also saw that at first, the subjection of labour to capital was only a formal result of the fact, that the labourer, instead of work ing for himself, works for and consequently under the capitalist. By the co-operation of numerous wage-labourers, the sway of capital develops into a requisite for carrying on the labour-process itself, into a real requisite of production. That a capitalist should com-
Capital, Volume One
385
mand on the field of production, is now as indispensable as that a general should command on the field of battle. All combined labour on a large scale requires, more or less, a directing authority, in order to secure the harmonious working of the individual activities, and to perform the general functions that have their origin in the action of the combined organism, as distin guished from the action of its separate organs . A single violin player is his own conductor; an orchestra requires a separate one . The work of directing, superintending, and adjusting, becomes one of the functions of capital, from the moment that the labour under the control of capital, becomes co-operative . Once a function of capital, it acquires special characteristics . The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist production, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus-value, and con sequently to exploit labour-power to the greatest possible extent. As the number of the co-operating labourers increases, so too does their resistance to the domination of .capital, and with it, the neces sity for capital to overcome this resistance by counter-pr.e ssure . The control exercised by the capitalist is not only a special function, due to the nature of the social labour-process, and peculiar to that proc ess, but it is, at the sam e time, a function of the exploitation of a social labour-process, and is consequently rooted in the unavoidable antagonism between the exploiter and the living and labouring raw material he exploits. Again, in p roportion to the increasing mass o f the means of production, now no longer the property of the labourer, b ut of the capitalist, the necessity increases for ,some effective control over the proper application of those means. Moreover, the co-operation of wage-labourers is entirely brought about by the capital that employs them . Their union into one single productive body and the establishment of a connexion between their individual functions, are matters foreign and external to them, are not their own act, but the act of the capital that brings and keeps them together. Hence the connexion existing between their various labours appears to them, ideally, in the shape of a preconceived plan of the capitalist, and practically in the shape of the authority of the same capitalist, in the shape of the powerful will of another, who subjects their activity to his aims . I f, then, the control of the capitalist is in s ub stance two-fold by reason of the two-fold nature of the process of production itself,-which, on the one hand, is a social process for producing use-values, on the other, a process for creating su rplus value-in form that control is despotic. As co-operation extends its scale, this despotism takes forms peculiar to itself. Just as at first the capitalist is relieved from actual labour so 500n as his capital has reached that minimum amount with which capitalist production, as such, begins, so now, h e hands over the work of direct and constant
386
The Critique of Capitalism
supervision of the individual workmen, and groups of workmen, to a special kind of wage-labourer. An industrial army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, requires, like a real army, officers ( managers ) , and sergeants (foremen, overlookers ) , who, while the work is being done, command in the name of the capital ist. The work of s upervision becomes their established and exclusive function . When comparing the mode of production of isolated peasants and artisans with production by.slave-labour, the political economist counts this labour of superintendence among the faux frais of production. B u t, when considering the capitalist mode of production, he, on the contrary, treats the work of control made necessary by the co-operative character of the labour-process as identical with the different work of control, necessitated by the cap italist character of that process and the antagonism of interests between capitalist and labourer. It is not because he is a leader of industry that a man is a capitalist; on the contrary, he is a leader of industry because he is a capitalist. The leadership of industry is an attribute of capital, j ust as in feudal times the functions of general and judge, were attributes of landed property. The labourer is the owner of h is labour-power until he has done bargaining for its sale with the capitalist; and he can sell no more than what he has-i.e., his' individual, isolated labour-power . This state of things is in no way altered by the fact that the capitalist, instead of buying the labour-power of one man, buys that of 100, and enters into separate contracts with 100 unconnected men instead of with one. He is at liberty to set the 100 men to work, without letting them co-operate. He pays them the value of 100 independent labour-powers, but he does not pay for the combined labour-power of the hundred . Being independent of each other, the labourers are isolated persons, who enter into relations with the capitalist, but not with one another. This co-operation begins only with the labour-process , but they have then ceased to .b elong to themselves. On entering that process, they become incorporat.ed with capital. As co-operators, as members of a working organism they are but special modes of existence of capital . Hence, the pro ductive pow.er developed by the labourer when working in co-operation, is the productive power of capita l . This power is developed gratuitously, whenever the workmen are placed under given conditions, and it is capital that places them under such con ditions. Because this power costs capital nothing, and because, on the other hand, the labourer himself does not develop it before his labour belongs to capital, it a ppears as a power with which capital is endowed by Nature-a productive power that is immanent in capital. The colossal effects of simple co-operation are to be seen in the ' gigantic structures of the ancient Asiatics, Egyptians, Etruscans, &c.
Capital, Volume One
387
"It has happened in times past that these Oriental States, after s up plying the expenses of their civil and military establishments, have found themselves in possession of a surplus which they could apply to works of magnificence or utility and in the construction of these their command over the hands and arms of almost the entire non agricultural population has produced stupendous monuments which still indicate their power. The teeming valley of the Nile .. . pro duced food for a swarming non-agricultural population, and this food, belonging to the monarch and the priesthood, afforded the means of erecting the mighty monuments which filled the land . . . . In moving the colossal statues and vast masses of which the trans port creates wonder, human labour almost alone, was prodigally used . . . . The number of the labourers and the concentration of their efforts sufficed. \Ve see mighty coral reefs rising from the depths of the ocean into islands and firm land, yet each individual depositor is puny, weak, and contemptible. The non-agricultural labourers of an Asiatic monarchy have little but their individual bodily exertions to bring to the task, but their number is their strength, and the p ower of directing these masses gave rise to the palaces and temples, the pyramids, and the armies of gigantic statues of which the remains astonish and perplex us. It is that con finement of the revenues which feed them, to one or a few hands, which makes such undertakings possible." This power of Asiatic and Egyptian kings, Etruscan theocrats, &c. , has in modern society been transferred to the capitalist, whether he be an isolated, or a· s in joint- stock companies, a collective capitalist. Co-operation, such as we find it at the dawn of human develop ment, among races who live by the chase, or, say, in the agriculture of Indian communities, is based, on the one hand, on ownership in common of the means of production, and on the other hand, on the fact, that in those cases, each individual has no more torn him self off from the navel-string of his tribe or community, than each bee has freed itself from connexion with the hive. Such co-operation is distinguished from capitalistic co-operation by both of the above characteristics. The sporadic application of co-operation on a . large scale in ancient times, in the middle ages, and in m odern colonies, reposes on relations of dominion and servi tude, principally on slavery. The capitalistic form, on the contrary, pre-supposes from first to last, the free wage-labourer, who sells his labour power to capital . Historically, however, this form is devel oped in opposition to peasant agriculture and to the carrying on of independent handicrafts whether in guilds or not. From the stand point of these, capitalistic co-operation does not manifest itself as a particular historical form of co-operation, but co-operation itself appears to be a historical form peculiar to, and specifically distin guishing, the capitalist process of production.
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The Critique of Capitalism
Just as the social productive power of labour that is developed b y co-operation, appears to be the productive power of capital, so co-operation itself, contrasted with the process of production car ried on by isolated independent labourers, or even by small emplo y ers, appears to be a specific form of the capitalist process o f produc tion . It is the first change experienced by the actual labour-process, when subjected to capital . This change takes place spontaneously. The simultaneous employment of a large number of wage-labourers, in one and th e same process, which is a necessary condition of this change, also forms the starting-point of capitalist production . This point coincides with the birth of capital itsel f . If then, on the one hand, the capitalist mode of production presents itself to us histori cally, as a necessary condition to the transformation of the labour-process into a social process, so, on the other hand, this social form of the labour-process presents itself, as a method employed by capital for the more profitable exploitation of labour, by increasing that labour's productiveness. In the elementary form, under which we have hitherto viewed it, co-operation is a necessary concomitant of all production on a large scale, but it does not, in itself, represent a fixed form characteristic of a particular epoch in the development of the capitalist m ode of production. At the most it appears to do so, and that only approx imately, in the handicraft-like beginnings of manufacture, and in that kind o f agriculture on a large scale, which corresponds to the epoch of manufacture, and is distinguished from peasant agricul ture, mainly by the number of the labourers simultaneously employed, and by the mass of the means o f production concen trated for their use. Simple co-operation is always the prevailing form, in those bran ches of production in which capital operates on a large scale, and division of labour and machinery play b ut a sub ordinate part. Co-operation ever constitutes the fundamental form of the capi talist mode of p roduction; nevertheless the elementary form of co-operation contin ues to subsist as a particular form of capitalist production side by side with the more developed forms of that mode of production. CHAPTER X I V . DIVISION OF LABOUR A N D MANUFACTURE Section
1.
Two-fold Origin of Manufacture
That co-operation which is based on division of labour, assumes its typical form in manufacture, and is the prevalent characteristic form of the capitalist process of production throughout the manu-
Capital, Volume One
389
facturing period properly so called. That period, roughly speaking, extends from the middle of the 1 6th to the last third of the 1 8th century. Manufacture takes i t s rise in t w o ways:( 1) By the assemblage, in o n e workshop under the control of a sin gle capitalist, of labourers belonging to various independent hand icrafts, but through whose hands a given article must pass on its way to completion . A carriage, for example, was form erly the prod uct of the labour of a great number of independent artificers, such as wheelwrights, harness-makers, tailors, locksmiths, upholsterers, turners, fringe-makers, glaziers, painters, polishers, gilders, &c. In the manufacture of carriages, however, all these different artificers are assembled in one building where they work into one another's hands. * * * ( 2) Manufacture also arises in a way exactly the reverse of this-namely, by one capitalist employing simultaneously in one workshop a number of artificers, who all do the same, or the same kind of work, such as making paper, type, or needles . This is co-operation in its most elementary form . Each of these artificers ( with the help, perhaps, of one or two apprentices), makes the entire commodity, and he consequently performs in succession all the operations necessary for its production . He still works in his old handicraft-like way. But very soon external circumstances cause a different use to be made of the concentration of the workmen on one spot, and of the simultaneousness of their work. An increased quantity of the article has perhaps to be delivered within a given tim e . The work is therefore re-distributed . Instead of each man being allowed to perform all the various operations in succession, these operations are changed into disconnected, isolated ones, car ried on side by side; each is assigned to a different artificer, and the whole of them together are performed simultaneously by the co-operating workmen . * * * The mode in which manufacture arises, its growth out of handi� crafts, is therefore two-fold. On the one hand, it arises from the union of various independent handicrafts, which become stripped of their independence and specialised to such an extent as to be reduced to mere supplementary partial processes in the production of one particular commodity. On the other hand, it arises from the co-operation o f artificers of one handicraft; it splits up that particu lar handicraft into its various detail operations, isolating, and making these operations independent of one another up to the point where each becomes the exclusive function of a particular labourer. On the one hand, therefore, manufacture either intro duces division of labour into a process of production, or further develops that division; on the other hand, it unites together handi-
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crafts that were formerly separate. But whatever may have been its particular starting-point, its final form is invariably the same-a productive mechanism whose parts are human beings . * * * Section 2. The Detail Labourer and His Implements
If we now go more into detail, it is, in the first place, clear that a labourer who all his life performs one and the same simple opera tion, converts his whole body into the automatic, specialised imple ment of that operation . Consequently, he takes less time in doin g it, than the artificer who performs a whole series of operations in succession. But the collective labourer, who constitutes the living mechanism of manufacture, is made up solely of such specialised detail labourers. Hence, in comparison with the independent han dicraft, more is produced in a given time, or the productive power of labour is increased. Moreover, when once this fractional work is established as the exclusive function of one person, the methods it employs become perfected. The workman's continued repetition of the same simple act, and the concentration of his attention on it, teach him by experience how to attain the desired effects with the minimum of exertion . But since th ere are always several generations of labourers living at one time, and working together at the manufacture of a given article, the technical skill, the tricks of the trade thus acquired, become established, and are accumulated and handed down . Manufacture, in fact, produces the skill of the detail labourer, by reproducing, and systematically driv ing to an extreme within the workshop, the naturally developed dif ferentiation of trades, which it found ready to hand in society at large . On the other hand, the col). version of fractional work into the life-calling of one man, corresponds to the tendency shown by earlier societies, to make trades hereditary; either to petrify them into castes, or whenever definite historical conditions beget in the individual a tendency to vary in a manner incompatible with the nature of castes, to ossify them into guilds. � , * * An artificer, who performs one after another the various frac tional operations in the p roduction of a finished article, must at one time change his place, at another his tools. The transition from one operation to another interrupts the flow of his labour, and cre ates, so to say, gaps in his working-day. These gaps close up so soon as he is tied to one and the same operation all day long; they vanish in proportion as the changes in his work diminish . The resulting increased productive power is owing either to an increased expenditure of labour-power in a given time-i.e., to increased intensity" of labour-or to a decrease in the amount of labour-power un productively consumed. The extra expenditure of power,
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demanded by every transition from rest to motion, is made up for by prolonging the duration of the normal velocity when once acquired. On the other hand, constant labour of one uniform kind disturbs the intensity an d flow of a man's animal spirits, which find recrea tion and delight in mere change of activity. * * * Early in the manufacturing period, the principle of lessening the necessary labour-time in the production of commodities, was accepted and formulated: and the use of machines, especially for certain simple first processes that have to be conducted on a very large scale, and with the application of great force, sprang up here and there. Thus, at an early period in paper manufacture, the tear ing up of the rags was done by paper-mills; and in metal works, the p ounding of the ores was effected by stamping mills. The Roman Empire had handed down the elementary form of all machinery in the water-wheel . The handicraft period bequeathed to us the great inventions of the compass, of gunpowder, of type-printing, and of the automatic clock. But, on the whole, machinery played that subordinate part which Adam Smith assigns to it in comparison with division of labour . The sporadic use of machinery in the 17th century was of th e greatest importance, because it supplied the great mathemati cians of that time with a practical basis and stimulant to the crea tion of the science of mechanics . The collective labourer, formed by the combination of a number of detail labourers, is the machinery specially characteristic of the manufacturing period. The various operations that are performed in turns by the producer of a commodity, and coalesce one with another during the progress of production, lay claim to him in var ious ways. In one operation he must exert more strength, in another more skill, in another more attention; and the same indi vidual does not possess all these qualities in an equal degree. After Manufacture has once separated, made independent, and isolated the various operation s, the labourers are divided, classified, arid grouped according to their predominating qualities. If their natural endowments are, on the one hand, the foundation on which ,the division of labour is built up, on the other hand, Manufacture, once introduced, develops in them new powers that are by nature fitted only for limited and special functions. The collective labourer now possesses, in an equal degree of excellence, all the qualities requisite for production, and expends them in the m ost economical manner, by exclusively employing all his organs, consisting of particular labourers, or groups of labourers, in performing their special func tions . The one-sidedness and the deficiencies of the detail labourer become perfections when he is· a part of the collective labourer. The habit of doing only one thing converts him into a never
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failing instrument, while his cannexian with the whale mechanism campels him to' wark with the regularity af the parts af a machine. Since the callective labaurer has functians, bath simple and campI ex, bath high and law, his members, the individual labaur pawers, require different degrees af training, and must therefare have different values . Manufacture, therefare, develaps a hierarch y of labaur-pawers, to' which there carrespands a scale af wages. If, an the ane hand, the individual labaurers are appropriated and annexed far life by a limited functian; an the ather hand, the var iaus aperatians af the hierarchy are parcelled aut amang the labaur ers accarding to' bath their natural and their acquired capabilities . Every pracess af productian, hawever, requires certain simple manipulatians, which every man is capable af daing. They taO' are naw severed from their cannexian with the mare pregnant maments af activity, and assified intO' exclusive functians af spe cially appainted labaurers. Hence, Manufacture begets, in every handicraft that it seizes upan, a class af sa-called unskilled labaur ers, a class which handicraft industry strictly excluded. * * * Sectian 4. Division of Labour in Manufacture, and Division of Labour in Society
\Ve first cansidered the arigin af Manufacture, then its simple ele ments, then the detail labaurer and his implements, and finally, the tatality af the mechanism. \Ve shall naw lightly tauch upan the relatian between the division af labaur in manufacture, and the sacial divisian af labaur, which farms the - f aundatian af all p rad uc tian af cammadities. If we keep labaur alane in view, we may designate the separatian af sacial productian intO' its main divisians ar ge nera viz agricul ture, industries, &c., as divisian af labaur in general, and the split ting up af these families intO' species and sub-species, as divisian af labaur in particular, and the divisian af labaur within the wark shap as divisian O'f labaur in singular ar in detail. Divisian af labaur in a saciety, . and the carrespanding tying dawn af individuals to' a particular calling, develaps itself, just as daes the divisian af labaur in manufacture, fram appasite starting-paints . \Vithin a family, and after further develapment with a tribe, there springs up naturally a divisian af labaur, caused by differences af sex and age, a divisian that is cansequen tly based an a purely physialagical faundatian, which divisian enlarges its materials by the expansian af the community, by the increase af populatian, and mare especially, by the canflicts between different tribes, and the subjugatian af ane tribe by another. On the ather hand, as I have befare remarked, the exchange of products springs -
.,
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up at the points where different families, tribes, communities, come in contact; for, in the beginning of civilisation, i t is not private indi viduals but families, tribes, &c., that meet on an independent ,.. footing. Different communities find different means of production, and different means of subsistence in their natural environment . Hence, their modes of production, and of living, and their products are differen t. It is this spontaneously developed difference which, when different communities come in contact, calls forth the mutual exchange of products, and the consequent gradual conversion of those products into commodities. * * * The foundation of every division of labour that is well devel oped, and brought about by the exchange of commodities, is the separation between town and country. It may be said, that the wh ole economic history of society is summed up in the movement of this antithesis . We pass it over, however, for the present. Just as a certain number of simultaneously employed labourers are the material pre-requisites for division of labour in manufacture, so are the number and density of the populations, which here corre spond to the agglomeration in one workshop, a necessary condition for the division of labour in society. Nevertheless, this density is more or less relative. A relatively thinly populated country, with well-developed means of communication, has a denser population than' a more numerously populated country, with badly-developed means of communication; and in this sense the Northern States of the American Union, for instance, are more thickly populated than India. Since the production and the circulation of commodities are the general pre-requisites of the capitalist mode of production, division of labour in manufacture demands, that division of labour in society at large should previously have attained a certain degree of development. Inversely, the former division reacts upon and devel ops and multiplies the latter. Simultaneously, with the differenti ation of the instruments of labour, the industries that produce these instruments, become more and more differentiated. If the manufacturing system seize upon an industry, which, previously, was carried on in connexion with others, either as a chief or as a subordinate industry, and by one producer, these industries immediately separate their connexion, and become independen t. If it seize upon a particular stage in the p roduction of a commodity, the other stages o f its production become converted into so many independent industries. It has already been stated, that where the finished article consists merely of a n umber of parts fitted together, the detail operations may re-establish themselves as genuine and separate handicrafts. In order to carry out more perfectly the divi sion of labour in manufacture, a single branch of production is,
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according to the varieties of its raw material, or the various forms that one and the same raw material may assume, split up into numerous, and to some extent, entirely new manufactures. Accord ingly, in France alone, in the first haH of the 18th century, over 1 00 different kinds of silk stuffs were woven, and, in Avignon , it was law, that "every apprentice should devote himself to only one sort of fabrication, and should not learn the preparation of several kinds of stuff at once." The territorial division of labour, which confines special b ranches of production to special districts of a country, acquires fresh stimulus from the manufacturing system, which exploits every special advantage. The Colonial system and the open ing out of the m arkets of the world, both of which are included in the general conditions of existence of the manufacturing period, furnish rich m aterial for developing the division of labour in so ciety . It is not the place, here, to go on to show how division of labour seizes upon, not only the economic, but every other sphere of society, and everywhere lays t h e foundation of that all engrossing system of specialising and sorting men, that development in a man of one single faculty at the expense of all other faculties, which caused A. Ferguson, the master of Adam Smith, to exclaim: "\Ve make a nation of Helots, and have no free citizens . " B u t, in spite o f t h e numerous analogies a n d links connecting them, division o f labour in the interior of a society, and that in the interior of a workshop, differ not only in degree, but also in kind . The analogy appears most indisputable where there is an invisible bond uniting the various branches of trade. For instance the cattle-breeder produces hides, the tanner makes the hides into leather, and the shoem aker, the leather into boots . Here the thing produced by each of them is but a step towards the final form, which is the p roduct of all their labours combined. There are, besides, all the various industries that supply the cattle-breeder, the tanner, and the shoemaker with the means of p roduction . Now it is quite possible to imagine, with Adam Smith, that the difference between the above social division of labour, and the division in man ufacture, is merely subjective, exists merely for the observer, who, in a man ufacture, can see with one glance, all the numerous operations being performed on one spot, while in the instance given above; the spreading out of the work over great areas, and the great number o f people employed in each branch o f labour, obscure the connexion . B u t what is it that forms the bond between the independent labours of the cattle-breeder, -the tanner, and the shoe maker? It is the fact that their respective products ar.e commodities. \Vhat, on the other h and, characterises d ivision of labour in manu factures? The fact that the detail labourer produces no commodi ties . It is only the common product of all the detail labourers that
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'. 'becomes a commodity. Division of labour in society is brought • about by the purchase and sale of the products of different branches of industry, while the connexion between the detail opera . ti ons in a workshop, is due·to the sale of the labour-power of sev eral workmen to one capitalist, who applies it as combined l abour-power. The division of labour in the workshop implies con centration of the means of production in the hands of one capital i st; the division of labour in society implies their dispersion among many independent producers of commodities . While within the workshop, the iron law of p roportionality subjects definite numbers o f workmen to definite functions, in the society outside the work shop, chance and caprice have full play in distributing the produc ers and their means of production among the various branches of i ndustry. The different spheres of production, it is true, constantly tend to an equilibrium: for, on the one hand, while each producer of a commodity is bound to produce a use-value, to satisfy a partic ular social want, and while the extent of these wants differs quan titatively, still there exists an inner relation which settles their p ro portions into a regular system, and that system one of spontaneous growth; and, on the other hand, the law o f the value of commodi ties ultimately determines how much of its disposable workingtime society can expend on each particular class of commodities. But this constant tendency to equilibrium, of t h e various spheres of production, is exercised, only in the shape of a reaction against the constant upsetting of this equilibrium. The a priori system on which the division of labour, within the workshop, is regularly car ried out, becomes in the division of labour within the society, an a posteriori, nature-imposed, n ecessity, controlling the lawless caprice of the producers, and perceptible in the barometrical fluctuations of the market-prices. Division of labour within the workshop implies the undisputed authority of the capitalist over men, that are b ut parts of a mechanism that belongs to him. The division of labour within the society brings into contact independent commodity� producers, who acknowledge no other authority but that of com pe tition, of the coercion exerted by the pressure of their mutual inter ests; just as in the animal kingdom, the bellum omnium contra omnes more or less preserves the conditions of existence of every species. The same bourgeois mind which praises division of labour in the workshop, life-long annexation of the labourer to a partial operation, and his complete subjection to capital, as being an orga nisation of labour that increases its productiveness-that same bourgeois mind denounces with equal vigour every conscious attempt to socially control and regulate the process of production, as an inroad upon such sacred things as the rights of property, free dom and unrestricted play for the bent of the individual capitalist.
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It is very characteristic that the enthusiastic apologists of the factory system have nothing more damning to urge against a general organisation of the labour of society, than that it would turn all society into one immense factory. If, in a society with capitalist production, anarchy in the social division of labour and despotism in that of the workshop are mutual conditions the one of the other, we find, on the contrary, in those earlier forms of society in which the separation of trades has been spontaneously developed, then crystallised, and finally made permanent by law, on the one hand, a specimen of the organisa tion of the labour of society, in accordance with an approved and authoritative plan, and on the other, the entire exclusion of divi sion of labour in the workshop, or at all events a mere dwarf-like or sporadic and accidental development of the same. Those small and extremely ancient Indian communities, some of which have continued down to this day, are based on possession in common of the land, on the blending of agriculture and handi crafts, and on an unalterable division of labour, which serves, when ever a new community is started, as a plan and scheme ready cut and dried . * * * The law that regulates the division of labour in the community acts with the irresistible authority of a law of Nature, at the same time that each individual artificer, the smith, the carpenter, and so on , conducts in his workshop all the opera tions of his handicraft in the traditional way, but independently, and without recognising any authority over him. The simplicity of the organisation for production in these self-sufficing communities that constantly reproduce themselves in the same form, and when accidentally destroyed, spring up again on the spot and with the same name-this simplicity supplies the key to the secret of the unchangeableness of Asiatic societies, an unchangeableness in such striking contrast with the constant dissolution and refounding of Asiatic States, and the never-ceasing changes of dynasty. The struc ture of the economic elements of society remains untouched by the storm-clouds of the political sky. The rules of the guilds, as I have said before, by limiting most strictly the number of apprentices and journeymen that a single master could employ, prevented him from becoming a capitalist. Moreover, he could not employ his journeymen in many other handicrafts than the one in which he was a master. The guilds zeal ously repelled every encroachment by the capital of merchants, the only form of free capital with which they came in contact. A mer chant could buy every kind of commodity, but labour as a com modity he could not b uy. He existed only on sufferance, as a dealer in the products of the handicrafts. If circumstances called for a fur ther division of labour, the existing guilds split themselves up into varieties, or founded new guilds by the side of the old ones; all this,
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however, without concentrating various handicrafts in a single workshop. Hence, the guild organisation, however much it may have contributed by separating, isolating, and perfecting the handi crafts, to create the material conditions for the existence of manu facture, excluded division of labour in the workshop. On the whole, the labourer and his means of production remained closely united, like the snail with its shell, and thus there was wanting the principal basis of manufacture, the separation of the labour er from his means of production, and the conversion of these means into capital. 'While division of labour in society at large, whether such divi sion be brought about or not by exchange of commodities, is common to economic formations of society the most diverse, divi sion of labour in the workshop, a s practised by manufacture, is a special creation of the capitalist mode of production alone. Section
5.
The Capitalistic Character of Manufacture
An increased number of labourers under the control of o ne capi talist is the natural starting-point, as well of co-operation generally, as of manufacture in particular. But the division of labour in manu facture makes this increase in the number of workmen a technical necessity. The minimum number that any given capitalist is bound to employ is here prescribed by the previously established division of labour. On the other hand, the advantages of further division are obtainable only by adding to the number of workmen, and this can be done only by adding multiples of the various detail groups. But an increase in the variable component of the capital employed necessitates an increase in its constant component, too, in the workshops, implements, &c. , and, in particular, in the raw material, the call for which grows quicker than the number of workmen. The quantity of it consumed in a given time, by a given a m ount of labour, increases in the same ratio as does the productive power of that labour in consequence of its division . Hence, it is a law, based. on the very nature of manufacture, that the minimum amount of capital, which i s b ound to be i n t h e hands of each capitalist, must keep increasing; in other words, that the transformation into capital of the social means of production and subsistence must keep extending. In manufacture, as well as in simple co-operation, the collective working organism is a form of existence of capital . The mechanism that is made u p of numerous individual detail labourers belongs to the capitalist. Hence, the productive power resulting from a combi nation of labours appears to be the productive power of capital. Manufacture proper not only subjects the previously independent workman to the discipline and command of capital, but, in addi tion, creates a hierarchic gradation of the workmen themselves .
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While simple co-operation leaves the mode of working by the indi vidual for the most part unchanged, manufacture thoroughly revo lutionises it, and seizes labour-power by its very roots . It converts the labourer into a crippled monstrosity, by forcing his detail dex terity at the expense of a world of productive capabilities and instincts; just as in the States of La Plata they butcher a whole beast for the sake of his hide or his tallow. Not only is the detail work distributed to the different individuals, but the individual himself is made the automatic motor of a fractional operation, an d the absurd fable of Menenius Agrippa, which makes man a mere fragment of his own body, becomes realised . I f, at first, the work man sells his labou r-power to capital, because the material means of producing a commodity fail him, now his very labour-power refuses its services unless it h as been sold to capital . Its functions can be exercised only in an environment that exists in the workshop of the capitalist after the sale. By nature unfitted to make anything inde pendently, the manufacturing labourer develops productive activity as il mere appendage of the capitalist's workshop . As the chosen people bore in their features the sign manual of Jehovah, so divi sion of labour brands the manufacturing workman as the property of capital. The knowledge, the judgment, and the will, which, though in ever so small a degree, are practised by the independent peasant or handicraftsman , in the same way as the savage makes the whole art of war consist in the exercise of his personal cunning-these facul ties are now required only for the workshop as a whol e . In telligence in production expands in one direction, because it vanishes in many others. \\That is lost by the detail labourers, is concentrated in the capital that employs them. It is a result of the division of labour in manufactures, that the labourer is brought face to face with the intellectual potencies of the material process of production, as the property of another, and as a ruling power . This separation begins in simple co-operation, wh ere the capitalist represents to the single workman, the oneness and the will of the associated labour. It is developed in manufacture which cuts down the labourer into a detail labourer. It is completed in modern industry, which makes science a productive force distinct from labour and presses it into the service of capital. In manufacture, in order to make the collective labourer, and through him capital, rich in social productive power, each labourer must be made poor in individual productive powers. "Ignorance is the mother of industry as well as of superstition. Reflection and fancy are subject to err; but a habit of moving the hand or the foot is independent of either. Manufactures, accordingly, prosper most where the mind is least consulted, and where the workshop may . . . be considered as an engine, the parts of which are men ; " As a
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matter of fact, some few manufacturers in the middle of the 18th century preferred for certain operations that were trade secrets, to employ half-idiotic persons. "The understandings of the greater part of men , " says Adam Smith, "are n ecessarily formed by their ordinary employments . The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple opera tions . . . has no occasion to exert his understanding . . . . He gener ally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a h uman creature to become." After describing the stupidity of the detail labourer he goes on : "The uni·formity of his stationary life natu rally corrupts the courage of his mind. . . . It corrupts even the activity of his body and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance in any other employments than that to which he has been bred . His dexterity at his own partic ular trade seems in this manner to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilised society, this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall." For preventing the complete deterioration of the great mass of the people by division of labour, A. Smith recommends education of the people by the State, but prudently, and in homceopathic doses . G. Garnier, his French translator and commentator, who, under the first French Empire, quite naturally developed into a sen ator, quite as naturally opposes him on this point. Education of the masses, he urges, violates the first law of the division of labour, and with it "our whole social system would be proscribed. " "Li·ke. all other divisions of labour," he says, "that between hand labour and head labour is more pronounced and decided in proportion as society ( he rightly uses this word, for capital, landed property and their State ) becomes richer. This division of labour, like every other, is an effect of past, and a cause of future progress . . . ought the government then to work in opposition to this division of labour, and to hinder its natural course? Ought it to expend a part of the public money in the attempt to confound and blend together two classes of labour, which are striving after division and separation?"6 . Some crippling of body and mind is inseparable even from divi sion of labour in society as a whole. Since, however, manufacture carries this social separation of branches of labour much further, and also, by its peculiar division, attacks the individual at the very roots of his life, it is the first to afford the materials for, and to give a start to, industrial pathology. "To subdivide a man is to execute him, if he deserves the sen tence, to assassinate him if he does not. . . . The subdivision of labour is the assassination of a people." 6.
G . Garnier, Vol. V o f h i s translation o f A . Smith, p p . 4-5 .
[Marx1
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Co-operation based on division of labour, in other words, manu facture, commences as a spontaneous formation . So soon as it attains some consistence and extension, it becomes the recognised methodical and systematic form of capitalist p roduction . History shows how the division of labour peculiar to manufacture, strictly so called, acquires the best adapted form at first by experience, as it were behind the backs of the actors, and then, like the guild handi crafts, strives to hold fast that form when once found, and here and there succeeds in keeping it for centuries . Any alteration in this form, except in trivial matters, is solely owing to a revolution in the instruments of labour. Modern manufacture wherever it arises-I do not here allude to modern industry based on machinery--either finds the disjecta membra poetre ready to hand, and only waiting to be collected together, as is the case in the manufacture of clothes in large towns, or it can easily apply the principle of divi sion, simply by exclusively assigning the various operations of a handicraft ( s uch as book-binding ) to particular men . In such cases, a week's experience is enough to determine the proportion between the numbers of the hands necessary for the various function s.7 By decomposition of handicrafts, by specialisation of the instru ments of labour, by the formation of detail labourers, and by grouping and combining the latter into a single mechanism, division of labour in manufacture creates a qualitative gradation, and a quantitative proportion in the social process of p roduction; it conse quently creates a definite organisation of the labour of society, and thereby develops at the same time new productive forces in the society. In its specific capitalist form-and under the given condi tions, it could take no other form than a capitalistic one manufacture is but a particular method of begetting relative sur plus-value, or o f augmenting at the expense o f the labourer the self-expansion of capital-usually called social wealth, "\Vealth of Nations," &c. It increases the social productive power o f labour, not only for the benefit of the capitalist instead of for that of the labourer, but it does this by crippling the individual labourers . It creates new conditions for the lordship of capital over labour. I f, therefore, on the one hand, it presents itself historically as a prog ress and as a necessary phase in the economic development of society, on the other hand, it is a refined and civilised method of exploitation. 7. The simple belief i n the inventive genius exercised a priori b y the indi vidual capitalist i n division of labour, e x i s t s now-a-days only among German professors, of the stamp of Herr Roscher, who, to recom pense t h e capi talist from whose Jovian head division
o f labour sprang ready formed, dedi cates to h i m "various wages" (diverse ArbeitsHihne ) . The more o r less exten s i v e application o f division o f labour depends on length o f purse, not o n greatness o f g e n i u s . [Marx]
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Political Economy, which as an independent science, first sprang into being during the period of manufacture, views the social divi sion of labour only from the standpoint of manufacture, and sees in it only the means of producing morc commodities with a given quantity of labour, and, consequently, of cheapening commodities and hurrying on the accumulation of capital. In m ost striking con trast with this accentuation of quantity and exchange-value, is the attitude of the writers of classical antiquity, who hold exclusively by quality and use-value. In consequence of the separation of the social branches of production, commodities are better made, the various bents and talents of men select a suitable field, and without some restraint no important results can be obtained anywhere. · Hence both product and producer are imp roved by division of labour . If the growth of the quantity produced is occasionally men tioned, this is only done with reference to the greater abundance of use-values. There is not a word alluding to exchange-value or to the cheapening of commodities. This aspect, from the standpoint of use-value alone, is taken as well by Plato,S who treats division of labour as the foundation on which the division of society into classes is based, as by Xenophon, who with characteristic bourgeois instinct, approaches more nearly to division of labour within the workshop. Plato's Republic, in so far as division of labour is treated in it, as the formative principle of the State, is merely the Athenian idealisation of the Egyptian system of castes, Egypt having served as the model of an industrial country to many of his contempo raries also, amongst others to Isocrates, and it continued to have this importance to the Greeks of the Roman Empire. During the rri anufacturing period proper, i.e., the period during which manufacture is the predominant form taken by capitalist production, many obstacles are opposed to the full development of the peculiar tendencies of manufacture. Although manufacture cre ates, as we have already seen, a simple separation of the labourers 8. W i t h Plato, division o f labour with in the community i s a development from the multifarious requirements, and the limited capacities o f individuals. The main point with h i m i s , that the labourer must adapt himself to t h e work, n o t the work to the laboure r ; which latter i s unavoidable, i f h e carries on several trades at once, thus making one or the other of them subordinate. S o i n Thucydide s : " S e a f a r i n g is an art l i k e any other, and cannot, as circum stances require, b e carried on as a sub sidiary occupation ; nay, other subsid iary occupations cannot b e carried on alongside of this one." If the work, says Plato, has t o wait for the labourer, the critical point i n the process i s missed
and the article spoiled. The same Platonic idea is found recurring in the protest o f the English bleachers against the clause in the Factory Act that pro vides fixed meal-times f o r a l l opera t i v e s . T h e i r business can not w a i t t h e convenience o f t h e w o r k m e n , for " i n the various operations of singeing, wash i n g , bleaching, mangling, calendering, and dyeing, n o n e o f them can be stopped a t a given moment without risk of damage . . . to enforce the same dinner hour f o r all the work people might occasionally subject valuable goods to the risk of danger by incom plete operation s . " Le platonisme o u va t-iI se niche r l [Marx]
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into skilled and unskilled, simultaneously with their hierarchic arrangement in classes, yet the number of the unskilled labourers, owing to the preponderating influence of the skilled, remains very limited . Although it adapts the detail operations to the various degrees of maturity, strength, and development of the living instru ments of labour, thus conducing to exploitation of women and children, yet this tendency as a whole is wrecked on the habits and the resistance of the male labourers. Although t h e splitting up of handicrafts lowers the cost of forming the workman, and thereby lowers his value, yet for the more difficult detail work, a longer apprenticeship is necessary, and, even where it would be super fl uous, is jealously insisted upon by the workmen . In England, for instance, we find the laws of apprenticeship, with their seven years' probation, in full force down to the end of the manufacturing period; and they are not thrown on on e side till the advent of Modern Industrv. Since handicraft skill is the foundation of manu facture, and since the mechanism of manufacture as a whole pos sesses no framework, apart from the labourers themselves, capital is constantly compelled to wrestle with the insubordination of the workmen . "By the infirmity of human nature," says friend Ure, "it happens that the more skilful the workman, the more self-willed and intractable he is apt to become, and of course the less fit a component of a mechanical system in which . . . he may do great damage to the whole." Hence throughout the whole manu facturing period there runs the complaint of want of discipline among the workmen. And had we not the testimony of contemporary' writers, the simple facts, that during the period between the 1 6th century and the epoch of Modern I ndustry, capital failed to become the master of the whole disposable working-time of the manufacturing labourers, that manufacturers are short-lived, and change th eir locality from one country to another with the emigrating or immi grating workm en, these 'facts would speak volumes . "Order must in one way or another be established," exclaims in 1 770 the oft-cited author of the "Essay on Trade and Commerce." "Order," re-echoes Dr. Andrew Ure 66 years later, "Order" was wanting in manufac ture based on "the scholastic dogma of division of labour," and "Arkwright created o rder." At the same time manufacture was unable, either to seize upon the production of society to its full extent, or to revolutionise that production to its very core. I t towered up as an economic work of art, on the broad foundation of the town handicrafts, and of the rural domestic industries. At a given stage in its development, the n a rrow technical basis on which manufacture rested, came into con flict with requirements of production that were created by manu facture itself. One of its most finished creations was the workshop for the
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production of the instruments of labour themselves, including espe cially the complicated mechanical apparatus then already employe d . A machine-factory, says Ure, "displayed t h e division of labour i n manifold gradations-the file, t h e drill, the lathe, having e a c h its different workman in the order of skill." (P. 2 1. ) This workshop, the product of the division of labour in manufacture, produced in . its turn-machines . It is they that swept away the handicraftsman's work as the regulating principle of social production . Thus, on the one hand, the technical reason for the life-long annexation of the workman to a detail function is removed. On the other h and, the fetters that this same principle laid on the dominion of capital, fall away. Part IV. (Continued ) . Production o f Relative Surplus-Value CHAPTER Xv. MACHINERY AND MODERN INDUSTRY Section
1.
The Development of Machinery
John Stuart Mill says in his "Principles of Political Economy" : " I t is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being ."9 That is, however, by no means the aim of the capitalistic application of machinery. Like every other increase in the productiveness of labour, machinery is intended to cheapen commodities, and, by shortening that portion of the working-day, in which the labourer works for himself, to lengthen the other portion that he gives, without an equivalent, to the capitalist. In short, it is a means for producing surplus - value . In manufacture, the revolution in the mode of production begins with the labour-power, in modern industry it begins with the instruments of labour. Our first inquiry then is, how the instru ments of labour are converted from tools into machines, ar what is the difference between a machine and the implements of handi craft? We are only concerned here with striking and general charac teristics; for epochs in the history of society are no more separated from ea ch other by hard and fast lines of demarcation, than are geological epochs. * * * Section
3.
The Proximate Effects of Machinery on the Workman
The starting-point of Modern I ndustry is, as we have shown, the revolution in the instruments of labour, and this revolution attains its most highly developed form in the organised system of machin9. Mill
should have said, "of any human being not fed by other people's labour," for, without doubt, machinery
has g r eatly increased the well-to·do idlers. [Maf':r]
n u mber
of
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ery in a factory. Before we inquire how h uman material is incor porated with this objective organism, let us consider some general effects of this revolution on the labourer himself. A . A P P R O P R I A T I O N OF SUP P L E M ENTARY L A B O U R - P O W E R B Y C A P I T A L . T H E E M P LOYMENT
OF
W O M E N AND C H I L DR E N
In so far as machinery dispenses with m uscular power, it becomes a means of employing labourers o f slight muscular strength, and those whose bodily development is incomplete, but whose limbs are all the more supple. The labour of women and children was, therefore, the first thing sought for by capitalists who u�ed machinery. That mighty substitute for labour and labourers was forthwith changed into a means for increasing the number of wage-labourers by enrolling, under the direct sway of capital, every member of the workman's family, without distinction of age or sex. Compulsory work for the capitalist usurped the place, not only of the children's play, but also of free labour at home within moderate limits for the support of the family. The value o f labour-power was determined, not only by the labour-time necessary to maintain the individual adult labourer, but also by that necessary to maintain h is family. Machinery, by throw ing every member of that family on to the labour-market, spreads the value of the man's labour-power over his whole family. It thus depreciates his labour-power. To purchase the labour-power of a family of four workers may, perhaps, cost more than it formerly did to purchase the labour-power of the head of the family, but, in return, four days' labour takes the place of one, and their price falls in p roportion to the excess of the surplus-labour of four over the surplus-labour of one. In order that the family may live, four people must now, not only labour, but expend surplus-labour for the capi talist. Thus we see, that machinery, while augmenting the human material that forms the principal object of capital's exploiting power, at the same time raises the degree 0-£ exploitation . * * * B . P R O L O N G A T I O N OF THE W O R K I N G - D A Y
If machinery be the most powerful means for increasing the productiveness of labour-i .e., for shortening the working-time required in the production of a commodity, it becomes in the hands of capital the most powerful means, in those industries first invaded by it, for lengthening the working-day beyond all bounds set by human nature. It creates, on the one hand, new conditions by which capital is enabled to give free scope to this its constant tend ency, and on the other hand, new motives with whi ch to whet capi tal's appetite for the labour of others.
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I n the first place, in the form of machinery, the implements of labour become automatic, things moving and working independent of the workman . They are thenceforth an industrial perpetuum mobile, that would go on producing forever, did it not meet with certain natural obstructions in the weak bodies and the strong wills of its human attendants . The automaton, as capital, and because it is capital, is endowed, in the person of the capitalist, with intelli gence and will; it is therefore animated by the longing to reduce to a minimum the resistance offered by that repellent yet elastic natu ral barrier, man. This resistance is moreover lessened by the appar ent lightness of machine work, and by the more pliant and docile character of the women and children employed on it. * * * Machinery produces relative surplus-value; not only by directly depreciating the value of labour-power, and by indirectly cheapen ing the same through cheapening the commodities that enter into its reproduction, but also, when it is first introduced sporadically into an industry, by converting the labour employed by the owner of that machinery, into labour of a higher degree and greater efficacy, by raising the social value of the article produced above its individual value, and thus enabling the capitalist to replace the value of a day's labour-power by a smaller portion of the value of a day's product. During this transition period, when the use of ma chinery is a sort of monopoly, the p rofits are therefore exceptional, and the capitalist endeavours to exploit thoroughly "the sunny time of this his first love, " by prolonging the working -day as much as p os sible. The magnitude of the profit whets his appetite for more profit. As the use of machinery becomes more general in a particular industry, the social value of the product sinks down to its individ ual value, and the law that surplus-value does not arise from the labour-power that has been replaced by the machinery, but from the labour-power actually employed in working with the machinery, asserts itself. Surplus-value arises from variable capital alone, and we saw that the amount of surplus-value depends on two factors, viz., the rate of surplus-value and the n umber of the workmen simultaneously employed. Given the length of the working-day, the rate of surplus-value is determined by the relative duration o f the necessary labour and of the surplus-labour in a day. The number of the labourers simultaneously employed depends, on its side, on the ratio of the variable to the constant capital. Now, however much the use of machinery may increase the surplus-labour at the expense of the necessary labour by heightening the productiveness of labour, it is clear that it attains this result, only by diminishing the number of workmen employed by a given amount of capital . It converts what was formerly variable capital, invested in labour power, into machinery which, being constant capital, does not pro duce surplus-value. It is impossible, for instance, to squeeze as
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The Critique of Capitalism
much surplus-value out of 2 as out of 24 labourers . If each of these 2. 4 men gives only one hour of surplus-labour in 1 2 , the :1. 4 men give together 24 hours of surplus-labour, wh ile 2 4 hours is the total labour of the two men . Hence, the application of machinery to the production of surplus-value implies a contradiction which is imma nent in it, since of the two factors of the surplus-value created by a given amount of capital, one, the rate of surplus-value, cannot be increased, except by diminishing the other, the number O'f work men . This contradiction comes to light, as soon as by the general employment of machinery in a given industry, the value of the machine-produced commodity regulates the value of all commodi ties of the same sort; and it is this contradiction, that in its turn, drives the �apitalist, without his being conscious of th e fact, to excessive lengthening of the working-day, in order that he may compensate the decrease in the relative number of labourers exploited, by an increase not only of the relative, ·but of the abso lute surplus-labou r . I f , then, the capitalistic employment of machinery, on the one hand, supplies new and powerful motives tb an excessive lengthen ing of the working-day, and radically changes, as well the methods of labour, as also the character of the social working organism, in such a manner as to break down all opposition to this tendency, on the other hand it produces, partly by opening out to the capitalist new strata of the; working-class, previously inaccessible to h im, partly by setting free the labourers it supplants, a surplus working population, which is compelled to submit to the dictation of capi tal. Hence that remarkable phenomenon in the history of Modern Industry, that machinery sweeps away every moral and natural re striction on the length of the working-day. Hence, too, the eco n omic paradox, that the most powerful instrument for shortening labour-time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the labourer's time and that of his family, at the dis posal of the capitalist for the purpose O'f expanding the value of his capital. " I f," dreamed Aristotle, the greatest thinker of antiquity, "if every tool, when summoned, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it , just as the creations of Dredalus moved of themselves, or the tripods of Hephrestos went of their own accord to their sacred work, if the weavers' shuttles were to weave of them selves, then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master workers, or of slaves for the lords." And Antipatros, a Greek poet of the time of Cicero, hailed the invention of the water-wheel for grinding corn, an invention that is the elementary form of all machinery, as the giver of freedom to female slaves, and the bringer back of the golden age. Oh ! those heathens ! They understood, as the learned Bastiat, and before him the still wiser MacCulloch have discovered, nothing of Political Economy and Christianity. They
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did not, for example, comprehend that machinery is the surest means of lengthening the working-day. They perhaps excused the slavery of one on the ground that it was a means to the full devel o pment of another. But to preach slavery of the masses, in order that a few crude and half-educated parvenus, might become "emi nent spinners," "extensive sausage-makers," and "influential shoe black dealers," to do this, they lacked the bump l of Christianity. C. INTENSIFICATION OF LABOUR
The immoderate lengthening of the working-day, produced by machinery in the hands of capital, leads to a reaction on the part of society, the very sources of w hose life are menaced; and, thence, to a normal working-day whose length is fixed by law. Thenceforth a phenomenon that we have already met with, namely, the intensifi cation of labour, develops into great importance. Our analysis of absolute surplus-value had reference primarily to the extension or duration of the labour, its intensity being assumed as given. We now proceed to consider the substitution of a more intensified labour for labour of more extensive duration, and the degree of the former. * * * Section IV. The Factory
At the commencement of this chapter we considered that which we may call the body of the factory, i . e . , machinery organised into a system . \Ve there saw how machinery, by annexing the labour of women and children, augments the number of human beings who form the material for capitalistic exploitation, how it confiscates the whole of the workman's disposable time, by immoderate extension of the hours of labour, and how finally its progress, which allows of enormous increase of production in shorter and shorter periods, serves as a means of systematically getting more work done in a shorter time, or of exploiting labour-power more intensely. \Ve now turn to the factory as a whole, and that in its most perfect form . * * * So far as division of labour re-appears in the factory, it is primar ily a distribution of the workmen among the specialised machines; and of masses of workmen, not however organised into groups, among the various depart�ents of the -f actory, in each of which they work at a number of similar machines placed together; their co-operation, therefore, is only simple. The organised group, pecu liar to manufacture, is replaced by the connexion between the head workman and his few assistants . The essential division is, into work1. A reference t o the pseudo-science o f phrenology, in which the "bumps" o n a
person's s k u l l were thought to represent particular character t r a i t s . [R . T . ]
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The Critiqu e of Capitalism
men who are actually employed on the machines ( among whom are included a few who look after the engine ) , and into mere attendants ( almost exclusively children ) of these workmen. Among the attendants are reckoned more or less all "Feeders" who supply the machines with the material to be worked. In addition to these two principal classes, there is a numerically unimportant class of persons, whose occupation it is to look after the whole of the ma chinery and repair it from time to time; such as engineers, mechan ics, j oiners, &c. This is a superior class of workmen, some of them scientifically educated, others brought up to a trade; it is distinct from the factory operative class, and merely aggregated to i t . This division of labour is purely technical. To work at a machine, the workman should be taught from childhood, in order that he may learn to adapt his own movements to the uniform and unceasing motion of an automaton. \Vhen the machinery, as a whole, forms a system of manifold machines, work ing simultan eously and in concert, the co-operation based upon it, requires the distribution of various groups of workmen among the different kinds of machines. But the employment of machinery does away with the necessity of crystallising this distribution after the manner o f Manufacture, by the constant annexation of a particular man to a particular function. Since the motion of the whole system does not proceed from the workman, but from the machinery, a change of persons can take place at any time without an interrup tion of the work. The most striking proof of this is afforded by the relays system, put into operation by the manufacturers 'during their revolt from 1 848 to 1 8 50 . Lastly, the quickness with which machine work is learnt by young people, does away with the necessity of bringing up for exclusive employment by machinery, a special class of operatives. With regard to the work of the mere attendants, it can, to some extent, be replaced in the mill by machines, and owing to its extreme simplicity, it allows of a rapid and constant change of the individuals burdened with this drudgery. Although then, technically speaking, the old system of division of labour is thrown overboard by machinery, it hangs on in the fac tory, as a traditional habit handed down from Manufa cture, and is afterwards systematically re-moulded and established in a more hideous form by capital, as a means of exploiting labour-power. The life-long speciality of handling one and the same tool, now becomes the life-long speciality of serving one and the same machine. Machinery is put to a wrong use, with the object of trans forming the workman, from his very childhood, into a part of a detail-machine. In this way, not only are the expenses of his repro duction considerably lessened, but at the same time his helpless dependence upon the factory as a whole, and therefore upon the
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capitalist, is rendered complete. Here as everywhere else, we mus t distinguish between the increased productiveness due to the devel opment of the social process of production, and that due to th e capitalist exploitation of that process . In handicrafts and manu fac ture, the workman makes use of a tool, in the factory, the machi ne makes use of him . There the movements of the instrument of labour p roceed from him, here it is the movements of the machine that he must follow. In manufacture the workmen are parts of a living mechanism. In the factory we have a lifeless mechanism independent of the workman, who becomes its mere living append age. "The miserable routine of endless drudgery and toil in which the same mechanical process is gone through over and over again, is like the labour of Sisyphus. The burden of labour, like the rock, keeps ever falling back on the worn-out labourer."2 At the same time that factory work exhausts the nervous system to the utter m ost, it does away with the many-sided play of the muscles, and confiscates every atom of freedom, both in bodily and intellectual activity. The lightening of the labour, even, becomes a sort of tor ture, since the machine does not free the labourer from work, but deprives the work o'f all interest. Every kind o f capitalist p roduc tion, in so far as it is not only a labour-process, but also a process of creating surplus-value, has this in common, that it is not the work man that employs the instruments of labour, b ut the instruments of labour that employ the workma n . But it is only in the factory system that this inversion for the first time acquires technical and palpable reality. By means of its conversion into an automaton, the instrument of labour confronts the labourer, during the l abour process, in the s hape of capital, of dead labour, that dominates, and pumps dry, living labour-power. The separation of the intellectual powers of p roduction from the manual labour, and the conversion of those powers into the might of capital over labour, is, as we have already shown, finally completed by modern industry erected on the foundation of machinery. The special skill of each individual insig� nificant factory operative vanishes as an infinitesimal quantity before the science, the gigantic physical forces, and the mass .of labour that are embodied in the factory mechanism and, together with that mechanism, constitute the power of the "master." This "master," therefore, in whose brain the machinery and his monop oly of it are inseparably united, whenever he falls out with his 2 . F. Engels, The C o n d i t i o n o f the W o r k i n g Class in England in 1 84 4 , p. 2 1 7 .-Even an ordinary optimistic freetrader like Mr. Molinari goes so far as to say : " A man will become ex hausted sooner if he watches over the uniform motion o f a mechanism fifteen hours day than if h e exercises his phys-
ical force over the same interval o f time. This w o r k o f watching over something, which could be useful per haps as mental gynmastics provided it were not too prolonged, will, in the long run, destroy both body and mind t l1 rough excess."-G. de Molinari, Etudes economiques, Paris, 1 84 6 .
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"hands," contemptuously tells them : "The factory operatives should keep in wholesome remembrance the fact that theirs is really a low species of skilled labour; and that there is none which is m ore easily acquired, or of its quality more amply remunerated, or which by a short training of the least expert can be m ore quickly, as well as abundantly, acquired . . . . The master's machinery really plays a far more important part in the business of production than the labour and the skill of the operative, which six months' education can teach, and a common labourer can learn . " The technical s ubordina tion of the workman to the uniform motion of the instruments of labour, and the peculiar composition of the body of work people, consisting as it d oes of individuals of both sexes and of all ages, give rise to a barrack discipline, which is elaborated into a complete system in the factory, and which fully develops the before men tioned labour of overlooking, thereby dividing the workpeople into operatives and overlookers, into private soldiers and sergeants of an industrial army . "The main difficulty [in the automatic factory 1 . . . lay . . . above all in training human beings to renounce their desultory habits of work, and to identify themselves with the unvary ing regularity of the complex automaton. To devise and adminis ter a successful code of factory discipline, suited to the necessities of factory diligence, was th e Herculean enterprise, the noble achievement of Arkwright ! Even at the present day, when the system is perfectly organised and its labour lightened to the utmost, it is found nearly impossible to convert persons past the age of pu berty, into useful factory hands . " The factory code in which capital formulates, like a private legislator, and at his own good will, his autocracy over his workpeople, unaccompanied by that division of responsibility, in other matters so much approved of by the bour geoisie, and unaccompanied by the still more approved representa tive system, this code is but the capitalistic caricature of that social regulation of the labour-process which becomes requisite in co-operation on a great scale, and in the employment in common, of instruments of labour and especially of machinery. The place of the slave-driver's lash is taken by the overlooker's book of penalties . All punishments naturally resolve themselves into fines and deduc tions from wages, and the law-giving talent of the factory Lycurgus so arranges matters, that a violation of his laws is, if possible, more profitable to him than the keeping of them . We shall here merely allude to the material conditions under which factory labour is carried on. Ev.ery organ of sense is injured in a n equal degree by artificial elevation of the temperature, by the dust-laden atmosphere, by the deaJening noise, not to mention danger to life and limb among the thickly crowded machinery, which, with the regularity of the seasons, issues its list of the killed
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and wounded in the industrial battle. Economy of the social means o f production, matured and forced as in a hothouse by the factory system, is turned, in the hands of capital, into systematic robbery of what is necessary for the life of the workman while he is at work, robbery of space, light, air, and of protection to his person against the dangerous and unwholesome accompaniments of the productive process, not to mention the robbery of appliances for the comfort of the workman. Is Fourier wrong when he calls facto ries "tempered bagnos"? Section
5.
The Strife Between Workman and Machine
The contest between the capitalist and the wage-labourer dates back to the very origin of capital. It raged on throughout the whole manufacturing period . But only since the introduction of machin ery has the workman fought against the instrument of labour itself, the material embodim ent of capital. He revolts against this particular form of the means of p roduction, as being the material basis of the capitalist mode O'f production. * * * Section
9.
The Factory Acts. Sanitary and Educational Clauses of the Same . Their General Extension in England
Factory legislation, that first conscious and methodical reaction of society against the spontaneously developed form of the process of production, is, as we have s een, just as much the necessary prod uct of modern industry as cotton yarn, self-actors, and the electric telegraph . Before passing to the consideration of the extension of that legislation in England, we shall shortly notice certain clauses contained in the Factory Acts, and not relating to the hours of work. Apart from their wording, which makes it easy for the capitalist to evade them, the sanitary clauses are extremely meagre, and, in fact, limited to provisions for whitewashing the walls, for insuring cleanliness in some other matters, for ventilation, and for protection against dangerous machinery. In the third book we shall return again to the fanatical opposition of the masters to those clauses which imposed upon them a slight expenditure on appliances for protecting the limbs of their workpeople, an opposition that throws a fresh and glaring light on the Free-trade dogma, according to which, in a society with conflicting interests, each individual neces sarily furthers the common weal by seeking nothing but his own personal advantagel * * * Paltry as the education c lauses of the Act appear on the whole, yet they proclaim elementary education to be an indispensable con-
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dition to the employment of children. The success of those clauses proved for the first time the possibility of combining education and gymnastics with manual labour, and, consequently, of combining manual labour with education and gymnastics. The factory inspec tors soon found out by questioning the schoolmasters, that the fac tory children, although receiving only one half the education of the regular day scholars, yet learnt quite as m uch and often more. "This can be accounted for by the simple fact that, with only being at school for one half of the day, they are always fresh, and nearly always ready and willing to receive instruction . The system on which they work, half manual labour, and half school, rend ers each employment a rest and a relief to the other; consequently, both are far more congenial to the child, - than would be the case were he kept constantly at one. It is quite clear that a boy who has been at sch ool all the morning, cannot ( in hot weather particularl y ) cope with one who comes fresh and bright from his work. " Further information on this point will be found in Senior's speech at the Social Science Congress at Edinburgh in 1 86 3 . He there shows, amongst other things, how the monotonous and uselessly long school hours of the children of the upper and middle classes, use lessly add to the labour of the teacher, "while he not only fruit lessly but absolutely injuriously, wastes the time, health, and energy of the children." From the Factory system budded, as Robert Owen has shown us in detail, the germ of the education of the future, an education that will, in the case of every child over a given age, combine productive labour with instruction and gymnas tics, not only as one of the m ethods of adding to the efficiency O'f production, but as the only method of producing fully developed h uman beings. Modern Industry, as we have seen, sweeps away by techniCal means the manufacturing division of labour, under which each man is bound hand and foot for life to a single detail-operati on . At the same time, the capitalistic form o f that industry reproduces this same division of labour in a stiII more monstrous shape; in th e fac tory proper, by converting the workman into a living appendage of the machine; and everywhere outside the Factory, partly by the sporadic use of machinery and machine workers, partly by re-establishing the division of labour on a fresh basis by the general introduction of the labour of women and children, and of cheap un skilled labour . The antagonism between the manufacturing division of labour and the methods of Modern Industry makes itself forcibly fel t. It manifests itself, amongst other ways, in the frightful fact tha t a great part of the children employed in modern factories and manu-
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factures, are fram their earliest years riveted to' the mast simple manipulatians, and explaited far years, withaut being taught a single sart af wark that wauld afterwards make them af use, even in the same man ufactary ar factary. Madern Industry never laaks upan and treats the existing farm af a pracess as final . The technical basis af that industry is there fare revalutianary, while all earlier mades af praductian were essen tially canservative. By means af machinery, chemical processes and ather methads, it is cantinually causing changes nat anly in the technical basis af praductian, but alsO' in the functians of the labaurer, and in the sacial cambinatians af the labaur-pracess. At the same time, it thereby alsO' revalutianises the divisian af labaur within the saciety, and incessantly launches masses af capital and af warkpeaple fram ane branch af praductian to' anather. But if Madern I ndustry, by its very nature, therefare necessitates variatian af labaur, fl uency af functian, universal mability af the labaurer, an the ather hand, in its capitalistic farm, it repraduces the aId divi sian of labaur with its assified particularisatians . \Ve have seen h aw this absalute cantradictian between the technical necessities a f Madern Industry, and the sacial character inherent in its capitalis tic farm, dispels all fixity and security in the situatian af the labaurer; haw it canstantly threatens, by taking away the instru ments af labaur, to' snatch from his hands his means af subsist ence, and, by suppressing his detail-functian, to' make him super fluaus . \Ve have seen, taO', haw this antaganism vents its rage in the creatian af that manstrosity, an industrial reserve army, kept in misery in arder to' be always at the dispasal af capital; in the inces sant h uman sacrifices from amang the warking-class, in the mast reckless squandering of labaur-power, and in the devastatian caused by a sacial anarchy which turns every ecanamic progress intO' a sacial calamity. This is the negative side. But if, an the ane hand, variation af work at present impases itself after the manner af a n averpawering natural law, and with the blindly destructive ac tion af a natural law that meets with resistance at all paints, Madern Industry, on the ather hand, thraugh its catastraphes impases the necessity af recagnising, as a fundamental law af pra duction, variatian af wark, cansequently fitness af the labaurer far varied work, cansequently the greatest possible develapment af his varied aptitudes. It becames a question af life and death far saciety to adapt the made af productian to' the narmal functianing af this law. Madern Industry, indeed, compels society, under penalty af death, to' replace the detail-warker af to-day; crippled by life-lang repetitian af ane and the same trivial operatian, and thus reduced to' the mere fragment af a man, by the fully developed individual,
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fit for a variety of labours, ready to face any change of production, and to whom the different social functions h e performs, are but so many modes of giving free scope to his own natural and acquired powers. One step already spontaneously taken towards effecting this revo lution is the establishment of technical and agricultural schools, and of "ecoles d 'enseignement professionnel," in which the chil dren of the working-men receive some little instruction in technol ogy and in the practical handling of the various implements of la bour. Though the Factory Act, that first and meagre concession wrung from capital, is limited to combining elementary education with work in the factory, there can be no doubt that when the working-class comes into power, as inevitably it m ust, technical instruction, both theoretical and pra.ctical, will take its proper place in the working-class schools . There is also no doubt tha t such revo lutionary ferments, the final result of which is the abolition of the old division of labour, are diametrically opposed to the capitalistic form of prociuction, and to the economic status of the labourer cor responding to that form. But the historical development of the antagonisms, immanent in a given form of production, is the only way in which that form of production can be dissolved and a new form established. "Ne sutor ultra crepidam"-this ne plus ultra of handicraft wisdom became sheer nonsense, from the m oment the watchmaker \Vatt invented the steam-engine, the barber Ark wright, the throstle, and the . working-jeweller, Fulton, the steam ship . So long as Factory legislation is confined to regulating the labour in factories, manufactori es, &c., it is regarded as a mere interference with the exploiting rights of capital. But when it comes to regulat ing the so-called "home-labour," it is immediately viewed as a direct attack on the pat ria potestas, on parental authority. The tender-hearted English Parliament long affected to shrink from taking this step . The force of facts, however, compelled it at last t o acknowledge that modern industry, in overturning t h e economic foundation on which was based the traditional family, and the family labour corresponding to it, had also unloosened all tradi tional family ties . The rights of the children had to be proclaimed . The final report of the Ch . Emp l . Com m . of 1 866, states : " It is unhappily, to a painful degree, apparent throughout the whole of the evidence, that against n o persons do the children of both sexes so much require protection as against their parents." The system of unlimited exploitation . of children's labour in general and the so-called home-labour in particular is "maintained only because the parents are able, without check or control, to exercise this arbitrary
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and mischievous power over their young a n d tender offspring. . . . Parents must not possess the absolute power of making their chil dren mere 'machines to earn so much weekly wage.' . . . The chil dren and young persons, therefore, in all such cases may justifiably claim from the legislature, as a natural right, that an exemption should be secured to them, from what destroys prematurely their physical strength, and lowers them in the scale of intellectual and moral beings ." It was not, however, the misuse of parental authority that created the capitalistic exploitation, whether direct or indirect, of children's labour; but, on the contrary, it was the capitalistic mode of exploitation which, by sweeping away the economic basis of parental authority, made its exercise degenerate into a mischie vous misuse of power. However terrible and disgusting the dissolu tion, under the capitalist system, of the old family ties may appear, nevertheless, m odern industry, by assigning as it does an important part i n the process of production, outside the domestic sphere, to women, to young persons, and to children of both sexes, creates a new economic foundation for a higher form of the family and o f the relations between the sexes . I t i s , o f course, just a s absurd t o hold the Teutonic-Chris tian form of the family t o be absolute and final as it would be to apply tha t character to the ancient Roman, the ancient Greek, or the Eastern forms which, moreover, taken together form a series in historical development. Moreover, it is obvious that the fact of the collective working group being com posed of individuals of both sexes and all ages, must necessarily, under suitable conditions, become a source of humane develop ment; although in its spontaneously developed, brutal, capitalistic form, where the labourer exists for the process of production, and not the process of production for the labourer, that fact is a pestif erous source of corruption and slavery. ". ". ". Section
10.
Modern Industry and Agriculture
T � e revolut �on call � d forth by modern industry in agricultu re, and m the socIal relatIons of agncult ural produce rs, will be investi gated later on. In this place we shall merely indicate a few r�sults by way of anticipa tion. If the use of machine ry in agricultu re is for the most part free from the injuriou s physical effect it has on the �actory operativ e, its action in supersed ing the labourers is more mtense, and finds less resistanc e, as we shall see later in detail. In t �le counties of Cambrid ge and Suffolk, for example, the area of cul tIvated land has e � te � ded very much within the last twenty years ( �p . t ? 1 868 ) , whIle m the same period the rural populati on has dImInIsh ed, not only relatively , but absolute ly. I n the United States
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The Critique o f Capitalism
it is as yet only virtually that agricultural machines replace labour ers; in other words, they allow of the cultivation by the farmer of a larger surface, but do not actually expel the labourers employed. In 1 86 1 t h e number of persons occupied in England and Wales in the manufacture of agricultural machines was 1 ,0 3 4, whilst the number of agricultural labourers employed in the use of agricultural machines and steam-engines did not exceed 1 , 2.0 5 . I n tlle sphere of agriculture, modern industry h a s a more revolu tiona ry effect than elsewhere, for this reason, that it annihilates the peasant, that bulwark of the old society, and replaces him by the wage -labourer. Thus the desire for social changes, and th e class antagonisms are brought to the same level in the country as in the towns. The irrational, old -fashioned methods of agriculture are replaced by scientific ones . Capitalist production completely tears asunder the old bond of union which h el d together agriculture and manufacture in their infancy. But at the same time it creates the material conditions for a higher synthesis in the future, viz., the union of agriculture and industry o n the basis of the more perfected forms they have each acquired during their temporary separation . Capitalist production, b y collecting the population i n great centres, and causing an ever-increasing preponderance of town population, on the one hand concentrates the historical motive power of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the circulation of matter between man and the soil, i.e., prevents the return to the soil of its elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to lasting fertility of the soil . By this action it destroys at the same time the health of the town labourer and the intellectual life of the rural labourer. But while upsetting the naturally grown conditions for the maintenance of that circulation of matter, it imperiously calls for its restoration as a system, as a regulating law of social production, and under a form appropriate to th e full development of the h uman race . In agricul ture as in manufacture, the transformation of production under the sway of capital, means, at the same time, the martyrdom of the producer; the instrument of labour becomes the means of enslaving, exploiting, and impoverishing the labourer; the social combination and organisation of labour-processes is turned into an organised mode of crushing out the workman's individual vitality, freedom, and independence . The dispersion of the rural labourers over larger areas breaks their power of resistance while concentration increases that of the town operatives. I n modern agriculture, as in the urban industries, the increased productiveness and quantity of the labour set in motion are bought at the cost of laying waste and consuming by disease labour-power itself. Moreover, all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the labourer,
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but o f robbing the soil; all progress i n increasing the fertility o f the soil for a given time, is a progress towards ruining the lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country starts its development on the foundation of modern industry, like the United States, for example, the more rapid is this process of destruction. Capi � a � ist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combm � ng together of various processes into a social whole, only by sappmg the original sources of all wealth-the soil and the labourer. Part V. The Production of Absolute and of Relative S u rplus� Value CHAPTER XVI . ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE In considering the labour-process, we began by treating it in the abstract, apart from its historical forms, as a process between man and Nature. \Ve stated : "If we examine the whole labour-process, from the point of view of its result, it is plain that both the instru ments and the subjects of labour are means of production, and that the labour itself is productive labour." And we further added : "This method of determining, from the standpoint of the labour process alone, what is productive labour, is by no means directly applicable to the case of the capitalist process of productio n . " \Ve now proceed to the further development of this subject. So far as the labour-process is purely individual, one and the same labourer unites in himself all the functions, that later on become separated. \Vhen an individual appropriates natural objects for his livelihood, no one controls him but himself. Afterwards he is controlled by others. A single man cannot operate upon Nature without calling his own muscles into play under the control of his own brain. As in the natural body head and hand wait upon each other, so the labour-process unites the labour of the hand with that of the head. Later on they part company and even become deadly foes. The product ceases to be the direct product of the individ- . ual, and becomes a social product, produced in common by a co] lectire labourer, i. e., by a combination of workmen, each of whom takes only a part, greater or less, in the manipulation of the subject of their labour. As the co-operative character of the labour-process becomes more and more marked, so, as a necessary consequence, does our notion of productive labour, and of its agent the produc tive labourer, become extended. In order to labour productively, i t is n o longer necessary for y o u to do manual work yourself; enough, if you are an organ of the collective labourer, and perform one of its subordinate functions. The first . definition given above of pro-
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The Critique of Capitalism
ductive labour, a definition deduced from the very nature of the production of material objects, still remains correct for the collec tive labourer, considered as a whole. But it no longer holds good for each member taken individuallv. O n the other hand, howev�r, our notion of productive labour becomes narrowed. Capitalist production is not merely the produc tion of commodities, it is essentially the production of surplus value. The labourer produces, not for himself, but for capital. It no longer suffices, therefore, that he should simply produce. H e must produce surplus-value. That labourer alone is productive, who pro duces surplus-value for the capitalist, and thus works for the self expansion of capital . If we may take an example from outside the sphere of production of material objects, a schoolmaster is a pro ductive labourer, when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a h orse tci enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital i n a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation . Hence the notion of a productive labourer implies not merely a relation between work and useful effect, between labourer and product of labour, but also a specific, social relation of production, a relation that has sprung up historically and stamps the labourer as the direct means of creat ing surplus-valu e . To be a productive labourer is, therefore, not a piece of luck, but a misfortune. * * * The prolongation of the working-day beyond the point at which the labourer would have produced j ust an equivalent for the value of his labour-power, and the appropriation of that surplus-labour by capital, this is production of absolute surplus-value. I t forms the general groundwork o f the capitalist system, and the starting-point for the production o-f relative surplus-value. The latter pre-supposes that the working-day is already divided into two parts, necessary labour, and surplus-labour. In order to prolong the surplus-labour, the necessary labour is shortened by methods wh ereby the equiva lent for the wages i s produced in less time. The production of abso lute surplus-value turns exclusively upon the length of the work ing-day; the production of relative surplus-value, revolutionises out and out the technical processes of labour, and the composition of society. It therefore pre-supposes a specific mode, the capitalist mode of production, a mode which, along with its methods, ·means, and conditions, arises and develops itself spontaneously on the foundation afforded by the formal subjection of labour to capital. In the course of this development, the formal subjection is replaced by the real sub jection of labour to capital. * * * From one standpoint, any distinction between absolute and rela tive surplus-value appears illusory. Relative surplus-value is absolute, since it compels the absolute prolongation o f the working-day
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beyond the labour-time necessary to the existence of the labourer himself. Absolute surplus-value is relative, since it makes necessary such a development of the productiveness of labour, as will allow o f th e necessary labour-time being confined to a portion of t h e work ing-day. B u t if we keep in mind the behaviour of surplus-value, this appearance of identity vanishes. Once the capitalist mode of pro duction established and become general, the difference between absolute and relative surplus-value makes itself felt, wheriever there is a question of raising the rate of surplus-value . Assuming tha t labour-power is paid for at its value, we are confronted by this alter native : given the productiveness of labour and i ts normal intensity, the rate of surpl us-value can be raised only by the actual prolonga tion of the working-day; on the other hand, given the length of the working-day, that rise can be effected only by a change in the rela tive magnitudes of the components of the working-day, viz., neces sary labour and surplus-labour; a change which, if the wages are not to fall below the value of labour-power, pre-supposes a change either in the productiveness or in the intensity of the labour. If the labourer wants all his time to produce the necessary means of subsistence for himself and his race, he has no time left in which to work gratis for others . \Vithout a certain degree of productive ness in h is labour, he h as no such superfluo u s time at his disposal; without such superfluous time, no surplus-labour, and therefore no capitalists, no slave-powers, no feudal lords, in one word, no class of large proprietors. * * * CHAPTER XXv. THE GENERAL LAW OF CAPITALIST . ACCUMULATION Sec � ion 1 . The In� reased Demand for Labour-Power That Accom pames AccumulattOn, the Composition of Capital Remaining the Same
In this chapter we co ? sider the influence of the growth of capital . n t � e l t of the labounng class. The most important factor in this ? � � nqU!ry, IS the composition of capital and the changes it unde rgoes m the course of the process of accumulation. The composition of capital is to be understood in a two-fold sen se . �n th: � ide �f value, it is determined by the proportion in . . diVIded nto constant capital o r value of the means of whIch I � IS � prodUction, and vanable capital or value o f labour-power, the sum . total of wages. On the SIde of material, as it functions in the proc , ess o� �roduchon, all capita ! is divided into means of production and hvmg labour-power. ThIS latter composition is determined by the relation between the mass of the means of production
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The Critique of Capitalism
employed, on the one hand, and the mass of labour necessary for their employment on the other. I call the former the value composition, the latter the technical composition of capital. Between the two there is a strict correlation . To express this, I call the value-composition of capital, in so 'far as it is determined by its technical composition and mirrors the changes of the latter, the organic composition of capital . \Vherever I refer to the composi tion of capital, without further qualification, its organic composi tion is always understood. The many individual capitals invested in a particular branch o f production have, one with another, m o r e o r l e s s differen t composi tions . The average of the individual compositions gives us the com position of the total capital in this branch of production. Lastly, the average of these averages , in all branches of production, gives us the composition of the total social capital of a country, and with this alone are we, in the last resort, concerned in the following inves tigation. Growth of capital involves growth 0-£ its variable constituent or of the part invested in labour-power. A part of the surplus-value turned into additional capital must always be re-transformed into variable capital, or additional labour-fund . If we suppose that, all other circumstances remaining the same, the composition of capital also remains constant ( i .e., that a definite mass of means of p roduc tion constantly needs the same mass of labour-power to set it in motion ) , then the demands for labour and the subsistence-fund of the labourers clearly increase in the same proportion as the capital, and the more rapidly, the more rapidly the capital increases . Since the capital produces yearly a surplus-value, of which one part is yearly added to the original capital; since this increment itself grows yearly along with the augmentation of the capital already functioning; since lastly, under special stimulus to enrichment, such as the opening of new markets, or of new spheres for the outlay of capital in consequence of newly developed social wants, &c., the scale of accumulation may be suddenly extended, merely by a change in the division of the surplus-value or surplus-product into capital and revenue, the requirements of accumulating capital may exceed the increase of labour-power or of the number of labourers; the demand for labourers may exceed the supply, and, therefore, wages may rise. This must, indeed, ultimately be the case if the con ditions supposed above continue. For since in each year more labourers are employed than in its predecessor, sooner or later a point must be reached, at which the requirements of accumulation begin to surpass the customary supply of labour, and, therefore, a rise of wages takes place. A lamentation on this score was heard in England during the whole o f the fifteenth, and the first half of the ,
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eighteenth centuries. The more or less favourable circumstances in which the wage-working class supports and multiplies itself, in no w a y alter the fundamental character o f capitalist p roduction. As simple reproduction constantly reproduces the capital-relation itself, i.e., the relation of capitalists on the one hand, and wage-workers on the other, so reproduction on a progressive scale, i . e . , accumu lation, reproduces the capital-relation on a progressive scale, more capitalists or larger capitalists at this pole, more wage-workers at that. The reproduction of a mass of labour-power, which must in cessantly re-incorporate itself with capital for that capital's self expansion; which cannot get free from capital, and whose enslave ment to capital is only concealed by the variety of individual capitalists to whom it sells itself, this reproduction of labour-power forms, in fact, an essential of the reproduction of capital itself. Accumulation of capital is, therefore, increase of the prole tariat. * * * The law of capitalist p roduction, that is at the bottom of the pretended "natural law of population," reduces itself simply to this : The correlation between accumulation of capital and rate of wages is nothing else than the correlation between the unpaid labour transformed into capital, and the additional paid labour necessary for the setting in motion of this additional capital. It is therefore in no way a relation between two magnitudes, independent one of the other: on the one hand, the magnitude of the capital; on the other, the number of the labouring population; it is rather, at bottom, only the relation between the unpaid and the paid labour of the same labouring population. If the quantity of unpaid labour supplied by the working-class, and accumulated by the capitalist class ; increases so rapidly that its conversion into capital requires an extraordinary addition of paid labour, then wages rise, and, all other circumstances remaining equal, the unpaid labour diminishes in proportion . B ut as soon as this diminution touches the point at which the surplus-labour that nourishes capital is no longer sup plied in normal quantity, a reaction sets in : a smaller part of reve-. n ue is capitalised, accumulation lags, and the movement of rise in wages receives a check . The rise of wages therefore is confined within limits that not only leave intact the foundations of the cap italistic system, but also secure its reproduction on a progressive scale. The law of capitalistic accumulation, metamorphosed by economists into a pretended law of Nature, in reality merely states that the very nature of accumulation excludes every diminution in the degree of exploitation of labour, and every rise in the price of labour, which could seriously imperil the continual reproduction, on an ever-enlarging scale, of the capitalistic relation . I t cannot be otherwise in a mode of production in which the la bourer exists to
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The Critique of Capitalism
satisfy the needs of self-expansion of existing values, instead of, on the contrary, material 'A'ealth �xisting to satisfy the needs of devel� opment on the part of the labourer. As, in religion, man is gov erned by the products of his own brain, so in capitalistic produc tion, he is governed by the products of his own hand. Section
3.
Progressive Production o f a Relative Surplus-Population or Industrial Reserve Army
The accumulation of capital, though originally appearing as its quantitative extension only, is effected, as we have seen, under a progressive qualitative change in its composition, under a constant increase of its constant, at the expense of its variable constituent. *
*
*
* * \Vith the growth of the total capital, its variable constituent or the labour incorporated in it, also does increase, but in a con stantly diminishing proportion. The intermediate pauses are short ened, in which accumulation works as simple extension of produc tion, on a given technical basis. It is not merely that an accelerated accumulation of total capital, accelerated in a constantly growing progression, is needed to absorb an additional number of labourers, or even, on account of the constant metamorphosis of old capital, to keep employed those already functioning. In its turn, this increasing accumulation and centralisation becomes a source of new changes in the composition of capital, of a more accelerated dimi nution of its variable, as compared with its constant constituen t. This accelerated relative diminution of the variable constituent, that goes along with the accelerated increase of the total capital, and moves more rapidly than this increase, takes the inverse form, at the other pole, of an apparently absolute increase of the labour ing population, an increase always moving more rapidly than that of the variable capital or the means of employment. But in fact, it i s capitalistic accumulation itself that constantly produces, a n d pro duces in the direct ratio of its own energy and extent, a relatively redundant population of labourers, i . e ., a population of greater extent than suffices for the average needs of the self-expansion of capital, and therefore a surplus-population. *
*
*
*
The labouring population therefore produces, along with the accumulation of capital p roduced by it, the means by which itself is . made relatively superfluous, is turned into a relative surplus population; and it does this to an always increasing extent. This is a law of population peculiar to the capitalist mode of production; and in fact every special historic mode of p roduction has its own special laws of population, historically valid within its limits alone. An *
*
*
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abstract law of population exists for plants and animals only, and only in so fa r as man has not interfered with them . But if a surplus labouring population is a necessary product of accumulation or of the development of wealth on a capitalist basis, this surplus-population becomes, conversely, the lever of capitalistic accumulation, nay, a condition of existence of the capitalist mode of production. It forms a disposable industrial reserve army, that belongs to capital quite as absolutely as if the latter had bred it at its own cost. Independently of the limits of the actual increase of population, it creates, for the changing needs of the self-expansion of capital, a mass of h uman material always ready for exploitation . With accumulation, a n d the development of the productiveness of labour that accompanies it, the power of sudden expansion of capi tal grows also; it grows, not merely because the elasticity of the capi tal already functioning increases, not merely because the absolute wealth of society expands, of which capital only forms an elastic part, not mere ly because credit, under every special stimulus, at once places an unusual part of this wealth at the disposal of produc tion in the form of additional capital; it grows, also, bec ause the technical conditions of the process of production themselves machinery, means of transport, &c.-now admit of the rapidest transformation of masses of surplus-product into additional means of p roduction. The mass of social wealth, overflowing with the advance of accumulation, and transformable into additional capital, thrusts itself frantically into old branches of production, whose market suddenly expands, or into newly formed branches, such as railways, &c . , the need for which grows out of the development of the old ones . In all such cases, there must be the possibility of throwing great masses of men suddenly on the decisive points with out inj ury to the scale of production in other spheres. Overpopula tion supplies these masses . The course characteristic of modern industry, viz., a decennial cycle ( interrupted by smaller oscilla tions ) , of periods of average activity, production at high pressure, crisis and stagnation, depends on the constant formation, the greater or less absorption, and the re-formation of the industrial reserve army or surplus-population. In their turn, the varying phases of the industrial cycle recruit the surplus-populati o n, and beco me one of the most energetic agents of its reproduction. This peculiar course of modern industry, which occurs in no earlier period of h uman history, was also impossible in the childhood of capitalist production. The composition of capital changed but very slowly. \Vith its accumulation, therefore, there kept pace, on the whole, a corresponding growth in the demand for labour. Slow as was the advance of accumulation compared with that of more modern times, it found a check in the natural limits of the exploitable labouring population, limits which could only be got rid of by forci-
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ble means to be mentioned later. The expansion by fits and starts of the scale of production is the preliminary to its equally sudden con traction; the latter again evokes the former, but the former is impos sible without disposable human material, without an increase in the number of labourers independently of the absolute growth of the population. This increase is effected by the simple process that con stantly "sets free" a part of the labourers; by methods which lessen the numoer of labourers employed in proportion to the increased production . The whole form of the movement of modern industry depends, therefore, upon the constant transformation of a part of the labouring population into unemployed or half-employed hands . *
*
*
* * * Even Malthus recognises over-population as a necessity of modern industry, though, after his narrow fashion, he explains it by the absolute over-growth of the labouring population, not by their becoming relatively supernumerary. He says : "Prudential habits with regard to ma rriage, carried to a considerable extent am ong the labouring class of a country mainly depending upon manufactures and commerce, might inj ure it. . . . From the nature of a popula tion, an increase of labourers cannot be brought into 'market in con sequence of a particular demand till after the lapse of sixteen or eighteen years, and the conversion of revenue into capital, by saving, may take place much more rapidly; a country is always liable to an increase in the quantity of the funds for the maintenance of labour faster than the increase of population . " 3 After Political Economy has thus demonstrated the constant production of a rela tive surplus-population of labourers to be a necessity of capitalistic accumulation, she very aptly, in the guise of an old maid, puts in the mouth of her beau ideal of a capitalist the following words addressed to those supernumeraries thrown on the streets by their own creation of additional capital : -"We manufacturers do what we can for you, whilst we are increasing that capital on which you must subsist, and you must do the rest by accommodating your numbers to the means of subsistence ."4 Capitalist production can by no means content itself with the quantity of disposable labour-power which the natural increase of population yields. It requires for its free play an industrial reserve army independent of these natural limits . Up t o this point it has been assumed that the increase o r diminu tion of the variable capital corresponds rigidly with the increase or diminution of the number of labourers employed.
3. Malthus, PrinciPles of Political Economy, p p . 2 1 5 , 3 1 9 , 3 2 0 . In this
work, Malthus finally discovers, with the help o f Sismondi, the beautiful T r i n · ity o f capitalistic productio n : over-pro-
duction, over-population, over-consump tion-three very delicate monsters, indeed. [114' arx] 4 . Harriet Martineau, A Manchester Strike, 1 8 3 2 , p. 1 0 1 . [Marx]
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T h e number of labou rers commanded by capital may remain the same, o r even fall, while the variable capital increases . This i s the case if the individual labourer yields m ore labour, and therefore his wages increase, and t h i s although t h e price of labour remains the same or even falls, only more slowly than the mass of labour rises . Increase of variable capital, in this case, becomes an index of more labour, but not of more labourers empl oyed. I t is the absolute inter est of every capitalist to press a given quantity of labour out of a smaller, rather than a greater number of labourers, if the c o s t is about the same . In the latter case, the outlay of constant capital increases in proportion to the mass of labour set i n actio n ; i n the former that increase is much smaller. The more ex tended the scale of production, the stronger this motive. Its force increases with the accumulation of capital. We have seen that the development o f the capitalist mode of production and of the productive power of labour-at once the cause a n d effect of accumulation-enables the capitalist, with the same outlay of variable capital, to set in action more labour by greater exploitation
( extensive or intensiv e )
of each individual
labour-power. We have further seen that the capitalist buys with the same capital a greater mass of labour-power, as he progressively replaces skilled l a b o u rers by less skilled, mature la bour-power by immature, male by female, that of adults by that of young persons or children. On the one hand, therefore, with the progress of accumulation, a larger variable capital sets more labour in action without enlisting m o re labourers; on the other, a variable capital o f the same magni tude sets in action more labour with the same mass of labour-power; and finally, a greater number of inferior labour-powers by displace ment of higher. The production o f a relative surpl us-population, or t h e setting free o f labourers, goes on therefore yet more rapidl y than the tech nical revolution of the process of production that accompanies, and
is accelerated by, the advance of accumulation; and more ra pidly than the corresponding diminution of the variable part of capital as compared with the constant. If the means of production, as
.
they
increase in extent and effective power, become to a less extent means of employment o f labourers, this state of things is again modified by the fact that i n proportion a s the productiveness of labour increases, capital increases its supply o f labour more quickly th a n its demand for labourers. The overwork o f the employed part o f the working-class swells the ranks of the reserve, whilst conversely the greater pressure that the latter by its competition exerts on th e former,
forces these to submit to over-work and to subj ugation
under the d ictates o f capita l . The condemnation of one part o f the working-class to enforced idleness by the over-work o f the other
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part; and the converse, becomes a means of enriching the individual capitalists,5 and accelerates at the same time the production of the industrial reserve army on a scale corresponding with the advance o f social accumulation . How important is this element in the forma tion of the relative surplus-population, is shown by the example of England. Her technical means for saving labour are colossal . Never theless, i f to-morrow morning labour generally were reduced t o a rational amount, and proportioned to the different sections of the working-class according to age and sex, the working population to hand would be absolutely insufficient for the carrying o n o f national production on its present scal e . The great m a j ority of the labourers n o w "unproductive" would have to be turned into "productive" ones . Taking them as a whole, the general movements of wages are exclusively
regulated by the expansion
a n d contraction
of
the
indus trial reserve army, and these again correspond to the periodic changes of the i n d u s trial cycle. They are, therefore, not determined b y the variations of the absolute number of the working population, but by the varying proportions in which the working-class is divided into active and reserve army, by the increase o r diminution in the relative amount of the surplus-population, by the extent to which it is
now absorbed, now set free. For Modern Industry with its
decennial cycles and periodic phases, which, moreover, as accumula tion advances, are complicated by irregular oscillations following each other more a n d more quickly, that would indeed b e a beautiful law, which pretends to make the action of capital dependent on the absolute variation
of the population, instead o f regulating the
demand and supply o f labour by the alternate expansion and con5. Even in the cotton famine of 1 8 6 3 w e fi n d , i n a pamphlet o f t h e operative cotton-spinners o f Blackburn, fierce de nunciations o f over-work, w h i c h , i n consequence o f t h e F a c t o r y A c t s , o f c o u r s e o n l y affected a d u l t m a l e labour ers. "The adult operatives ·at this mill have been asked to work from twelve to thirteen hours per day, while there a r e hundreds who a r e compelled to be i d l e who would willingly work partial time, i n order t o maintain their fam ilies a n d s a v e their brethren from a premature grave through being over worked . . . . We," i t goes on to say, "would a s k i f the practice o f working overtime by a number o f hands is l i k e ly t o c r e a t e a good f e e l i n g between masters and servants. Those who are worked over-time feel the injustice equally with those who a r e condemned to forced idleness. There i s in the dis trict almost sufficient w o r k to give t o all p a r t i a l employment i f f a i r l y distrib uted. W e a r e only asking what is right i n requesting the masters generally to
pursue a system of short hours, par ticularly until a better state of things begins to dawn 'upon us, rather than to work a portion of the hands over-time, while others, f o r want o f w o r k . a r e compelled to exist upon c h a r i t y . " ( " Re ports of Insp. of Fact., Oct. 3 1 , 1 8 6 3 , " p . 8 . ) The author o f the "Essay o n Trade and Commerce" grasps the effect o f a relative surplus-population o n the employed labourers w i t h his usual unerring bourgeois instinct. "An other cause o f idleness i n this kingdom i s the want o f a sufficient number of labouring hands. . . . Whenever from extraordinary demand for m a n ufac tures, labour grows scarce, the labour ers feel their own consequence, .and will make their masters feel i t likewise-it i s amazin g ; but so depraved are the dispositions o f these people, that in such cases a set o f workmen have com bined to distress the employer by idling a whole day together." ("Essay, &c . , " p p . 2 7 , 2 8 . ) T h e fellows i n f act were hankering after a rise i n w a g e s . [Marx]
Capital, Volume One traction
of
under-full,
capital, because
the labou r-market capital
-is
now
expanding,
appearing now
again
427 relatively over-full,
because it is contracting. Yet this is the dogma of the economists . According to them, wages rise i n consequence o f accumulation of capital . The higher wages stimulate the working population to more rapid multiplication, and this goes on until the labour market becomes too full, and therefore capital, relatively to the supply of labour, becomes insufficien t . Wages fall, and now we have the reverse of the meda1 . The working popul a tion i s little by little decimated as the result of the fall in wages, so that capital is again i n excess relatively to them, or, as others explain it, falling wages and the corresponding increase i n the expl oitation o f the labourer again accelerates accumulation, whilst, at the same time, the lower wages h o l d the increase of the working-class i n check. Then comes again the time, when the s upply of labour is less than the demand, wages rise, and so on. A beautiful mode of motion this for devel oped capitalist production ! Before, i n consequence of the rise o f wages, any positive increase o f the population really fi t for work c o ul d occur, the time would have been passed again and again, during which
the industrial campaign must have been carried
through, the battle fought and wo n . *
*
*
T h e industrial reserve army, during the periods of stagnation a n d average prosperity, weighs d o w n t h e active labour-army; d u r i n g t h e periods o f over-production and paroxysm, i t h o l d s i t s pretensions in check. Relative surplus-population is therefore t h e p i v o t upon which the law of demand and supply of labour works. It confines th e field o f action o f this law within the limits absolutely convenient to the activity of exploitation and to the domination o f capital . This is the place to return to o n e of the grand exploits of eco nomic apologetics. It will be remembered that i f through the intro
duction of new, or the extension of old, machinery, a portion of var iable capital is transformed into constant, the economic apolo,gist interprets this operation which "fixes" capital and by that very act sets labourers " f ree , " in exactly the opposite way, pretending that it sets free capital for the labourers. Only now can one fully under stand the effrontery of these apologists . \Vhat are set free are not only the labourers immediately turned out by the machines, but also their future substitutes i n the rising generation, and the addi�
tional contingent, that with the usual extension of trade o n the old basis would be regularly absorbed. They are now all "set free," and every new bit of capital looking out f o r employment can dispose of them . \Vhether it attracts them o r others, t h e effect o n t h e general labour demand will be nil, i f this capital is j us t s ufficient to take o u t of t h e market as m a n y labourers a s t h e machines threw u p o n i t . I f
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it employs a smaller number, that of the supernumeraries increases; if it employs a greater, the general demand for l abour only increases to the extent of the excess of the employed over those "set free." The impulse that additional capital, seeking an outlet, would othe r_ wise have given to the general demand for labour, is therefore in every case neutralised to the extent of the labourers thrown out o f employment by the machine. That is to say, the mechanism of capi talistic production so manages matters that the absolute increase of capital is accompanied by no corresponding rise in the general demand for labour. And this the apologist calls a compensation for the misery, the sufferings, the possible death of the displaced labourers during the transition period that banishes them into the industrial reserve army! The demand for labour is not identical with increase of capital, nor supply of labour with increase of the working-class . It is not a case of two independent forces working on one another. Les des sont pipes. Capital works on both sides at the same time. If its accumulation, on the one hand, increases the demand for labour, it increases on the other the supply of labourers by the "setting free" of them, whilst at the same time the pressure of the unemployed compels those that are employed to furnish more labour, ,md therefore makes the supply of labour, to a certain extent, independent of the supply of labourers. The action of the law of supply and demand of labour on this basis completes the des potism of capital . As soon, therefore, as the labourers learn the secret, how it com e s to pass that in the same · measure as they work more, as they produce more wealth for others, and as the productive power of their labour increases, so in the same measure even their function as a means of the self-expansion of capital becomes more and more precarious for them; as soon as they discov.er that the degree of intensity of the competition among themselves depends wholly on the pressure of the relative surplus -population; as soon as, by Trades' Unions, &c., they try to organize a regular .co-operation between employed and unemployed in o rder to destroy or to weaken the ruinous effects of this natural law of capitalistic produc tion on their class, so soon capital and its sycophant, Political Econ omy, cry out at the infringement of the "eternal" and so to say "sacred" law of supply and demand. Every combination of employed and en employed disturbs the "harmonious" action of this law. But, on the other hand, as soon as ( in the colonies, e.g. ) adverse circumstances prevent the creation of an industrial reserve army and, with it, the absolute dependence of the working-class upon the capitalist class, capital, along with its commonplace Sancho Panza, rebels against the "sacred" law of supply and demand, and tries to check its inconvenient action by forcible means and State interference.
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Different Forms of the Relative Surplus-Population. The General Law of Capitalistic Accumulation
The relative surplus-population exists in every possible form. Every labourer belongs to it during the time when he is only par tially employed or wholly unemployed. Not taking into account the great periodically recurring forms that the changing phases o f the industrial cycle impress on it, now an acute form during the crisis, then again a chronic form during dull times-it has always three forms, the floating, the latent, the stagnant. * * * The lowest sediment of the relative surplus-population finally dwells in the sphere of p auperism. Exclusive of vagabonds, crimi nals, prostitutes, in a word, the "dangerous" classes, this layer of society consists of three categories. First, those able to work. One need only glance superficially at the statistics of English pauperism to find that the quantity of paupers increases with every crisis, and diminishes with every revival of trade. Second, orphans and pauper children . These are candidates for the industrial reserve army, and are, in times of great prosperity, as 1 86 0 , e .g . , speedily and in large numbers enrolled in the active army of labourers. Third, the demoralised and ragged, and those unable to work, chiefly people who succumb to their incapacity for adaptation, due to the division of labour; people who have passed the normal age of the labourer; the victims of industry, whose number increases with the increase of dangerous machinery, of mines, chemical works, &c., the muti lated, the sickly, the widows, &c . .Pauperism is the hospital of the active labour-army and the dead weight of the industrial reserve army. I ts production is included in that of the relative surplus p opulation, its necessity in theirs; along with the surplus population, pauperism forms a condition of capitalist production, and of the capitalist development of wealth. It enters into the faux frais of capitalist production; but capital knows how to throw these, for the most part, from its own shoulders on to those of the work ing-class and the lower middle class. The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth, and, therefore, also the absolute mass ot the proletariat and the productiveness of its labour, the greater is the industrial reserve army. The same causes which develop the expansive power of capital, develop also the labour-power at its dis posal. The relative mass of the industrial reserve army increases therefore with the potential energy of wealth . But the greater this reserve army in proportion to the active labour-army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated surplus-population, whose misery is in inverse ratio t o its torment of labour. The more extensive, finally,
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the lazarus-layers of th e working-class, and the industrial reserve army, the greater is official pauperism. This is the absolute gene ral law of ca.pitaUst accumulation. Like all other laws it is modified in its working by many circumstances, the analysis of which does n ot concern us here . The folly is now patent of the economic wisdom that preaches to the labourers the accommodation of their number to the req uire ments of capital. The mechanism of capitalist production and ac cumulation constantly effects this adjustment. The first word of this adaptation is the creation of a relative surplus-population, or indu s trial reserve army. Its last word is the misery of constantly extending strata of the active army of labour, and the dead weight of pauper ism . The law by which a constantly increasing quantity of means of production, thanks to the advance in the productiveness of social labour, may be set in movement by a progressively diminish ing expenditure of human power, this law, in a capitalist society where the labourer does not employ the means of production, but the means of production employ the labourer-undergoes a com plete inversion and is expressed thus : the higher the productiveness of labour, the greater is the pressure of the labourers on the means of employment, the more precarious, therefore, becomes their con dition of existence, viz., the sale of their own labour-power for the increasing of another's wealth, or for the self-expansion of capital. The fact that the means of production, and the productiveness of labour, increase more rapidly than the productive population, expresses itself; therefore, capitalistically in the inverse form that the labouring population always increases more rapidly than the conditions under which capital can employ this increase for its own self-expansion . We saw in Part IV., when analysing the production of relative surplus-value : within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiven.ess of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means for the development of produc tion transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentiali ties of the labour-process in the same proportion as science is incor porated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour-process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transfo,rm his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of th� Juggernaut of capital . But all methods for the production of surplus-value are at the same time meth ods of accu-
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l�;:mulation;
4 31
and every extension of accumulation becomes again a
C , means for the development of those methods . It follows therefore
\: , that in proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, . . be his payment high or low, must grow worse . The law, finally, that always equilibrates the relative surplus-population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets the labourer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degra dation, at the opposite pole, i . e . , on the side of the class that pro duces its own product in the form of capital. '" '" '"
Part VI I I . The So-Called Primitive Accumulation CHAPTER XXVI . THE SECRET O F PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATI ON \Ve have seen how money is changed into capital; how through capital surplus-value is made, and from surplus-value more capital. But the accumulation of capital pre-supposes surplus-value; surplus-value pre-supposes capitalistic production; capitalistic pro duction pre-supposes the pre-existence of considerable masses of capi tal and of labour-power in the hands of producers of commodities. The whole movement, therefore, seems to tum in a vicious circle, out of which we can only get by supposing a primitive accumula tion ( previous accumulation of Adam Smith ) preceding capitalistic accumulation; a n accumulation not the result of the capitalist mode of production but its starting point. This primitive accumulation plays in Political Economy about the same part as original sin in theology. Adam bit the apple, and thereupon sin fell on the h uman race . I ts origin is supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote of the past. In times long gone by there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelli gent, and above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living. The legend of theologi cal original sin tells us certainly how man came to be condemned to eat his bread in the sweat o f his b row; but the h istory of eco nomic original sin reveals to us tha t there are people to whom this is by no means essential. Never min d ! Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last nothing to sell except their own skin s . And from this original .sin dates the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its labour, has u p to now n othing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few
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that increases constantly although they have long ceased to work. Such insipid childishness is every day preached to us in the defence of property. M. Thiers, e.g., had the assurance to repeat it with all the solemnity of a statesman, to the French people, once so spiri tuel. But as soon as the question of property crops up, it becomes a sacred duty to proclaim the intellectual food of the infant as the one thing fit for all ages and for all stages of development . In actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, briefly force, play the great part. In the tender annals of Political Economy, the idyllic reigns from time immemorial. Right and "labour" were from all time the sole means of enrichment, the present year of course always excepted. As a matter of fact, the methods of primitive accumulation are anything but idyllic. In themselves money and commodities are no more capital than are the means of production and of subsistence. They want trans forming into capital. But this transformation itself can only take place under certain circumstances that centre in this, viz ., that two very different kinds of commodity-possessors must come face to face and into contact; on the one hand, the owners of money, means of production , means of subsistence, who are eager to increase the sum of values they possess, by buying other people's l abour-power; on the other hand, free labourers, the seUers of their own labour-power, and therefore the sellers of labour. Free labour ers, in the doubl e - sense that neither they themselves form part and parcel of the means of production, as in the case of slaves, bonds men, &c., nor do the means of production belong to them , as in the case of peasant-proprietors; they are, therefore, free from, unencum bered by, any means of production of their own . With this polari sation of the market for commodities, the fundamental condition� of capitalist production are given. The capitalist system pre supposes the complete separation of the labourers from all property in the means by which they can realise their labour. As soon as cap italist production is once on its own legs, it not only maintains this separation, but reproduces it on a continually extending scal e. The process, therefore, that clears the way for the capitalist system, can be none other than the process which takes away from the labourer the possession of his means of production; a process that trans forms, on the one hand, the social means oJ subsistence and of production into capital, on the other, the immediate producers into wage-labourers . The so-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production . It appears as primitive, because it forms the pre-historic stage of capital and of the mode of produc tion corresponding with i t . The economic structure of capitalistic society has grown o u t o f the economic structure of feudal society. T h e dissolution of the
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latter set free t h e elements of the former. The immediate producer, the labourer, could only dispose of his own person after he had ceased to be attached to the soil and ceased to be the slave, serf, or bondman of another. To become a free seller of labour-power, who carries his commodity wherever h e finds a market, h e must further have escaped from the regime o f the guilds, their rules for apprentices a n d j ourneymen, and the impediments of their labour regulations . Hence, the historical movement which changes the producers into wage-workers, appears, on the one hand, as their emancipation from serfdom and from the fetters of the guilds, and this side alone exists for our bourgeois his torians . But, on the other hand, these new freedmen became sellers of themselves only after they had been robbed of all their own means of production, and of all the guarantees of existence afforded by the old feudal arrangemen ts . And the history of this, their expropriation, is written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire. The industrial capitalists, these new potentates, had on their part not only to displace the guild masters of handicrafts, but also the feudal lords, the possessors of the sources of wealth. In this respect their conquest of social power appears as the fruit of a victorious s truggle both against feudal lordship and its revolting prerogatives, and against the guilds and the fetters they laid on the free develop ment of production and the free exploitation of man by man. The chevaliers d'industrie, however, only succeeded in supplanting the chevaliers of the sword by making use of events of which they themselves were wholly innocen t. They have risen by means as vile as those by which the Roman freedman once o n a time made him self the master of his patronus . The starting-point of the development that gave rise t o the wage-labourer as well as to the capitalist, was the servitude of the labourer. The advance consisted in a change of form of this servi tude, in the transformation of feudal exploitation into capitalist exploitation . To understand its march, we need not go back very far. Although we come across the first beginnings of capitalis t production as early as the 1 4th or 1 5th century, sporadically, in cer tain towns of the Mediterranean, the capitalistic era dates from the" 1 6th century. Wherever it appears, the abolition of serfdom has been long effected, and the highest development of the middle ages, the existence of sovereign towns, has been long on the wane . I n the history o f primitive accumulation, all revolutions are epoch-making that act as levers for the capitalist class in course of formation; but, above all, those moments when great masses o f men a re suddenly a n d forcibly torn from their means o f subsist ence, and hurled as free and "unattached" proletarians on the labour-market. The expropriation of the agricultural producer, of
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the peasant, from the soil, is the basis of the whole process. The his tory of this expropriation, in different countries, assumes different aspects, and runs through its various phases in different orders of succession, and at different periods. In England alone, which we take as our example, has it the classic form . CHAPTER XXVII . EX PROPRIA TION OF THE AGRICULTURAL P OPULATION FROM THE LAND In England, serfdom had practically disappeared in the last part of the 1 4th century. The immense majority of the popul«tion con sisted then, and to a still larger extent, in the 1 5 th century, of free peasant proprietors, whatever was the feudal title under which their right of property was hidden . * * * The prelude of the revolution that laid the foundation of the capitalist mode of production, was played in the last third of the 1 5th, and the first decade of the 1 6th century. A mass of free prole tarians was hurled on the labour-market by the breaking-up of the bands of feudal retainers, who , as Sir James Steuart well says, "every where uselessly filled house and castle." Although the royal power, itself a product of bourgeois development, in its strife after absolute sovereignty forcibly hastened on the dissolution of these bands of retainers, it was by no means the sole cause of it. In insolent conflict with king and parliament, the great feudal lords created an incomparably larger proletariat by the forcible driving of the peas antry from the land, to which the latter had the same feudal right as the lord himself, and by the usurpation of the common lands . The rapid rise 6f the Flemish wool manufactures, and the corre sponding rise in the price of wool in England, gave the direct impulse to these evictions. The old nobility had been devoured by the great feudal wars . The new nobility was the child of its time, for which money was the power of all powers . Transformation of arable land into sheep-walks was, therefore, its cry. * * * \Vith the development of capitalist production during the manu facturing period, the public opinion o f Europe had l ost the last remnant of shame and conscience . The nations bragged cynically of every infamy that served them as a means to capitalistic accumula tio n . Read, e.g., the naive Annals of Commerce of the worthy A . Anderson . Here it i s trumpeted forth a s a triumph o f English state craft that at the Peace of Utrecht, England extorted from the Spaniards by the Asiento Treaty the privilege of being allowed to ply the negro-trade, until then only carried on between Africa and the English \Vest In dies, between Africa and Spanish America as well. England thereby acquired the right of supplying Spanish America until 1 743 with 4,800 negroes yearly. This threw, at the same time, an official cloak over British smuggling. Liverpool waxed fat on the
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slave-trade. This was its method of primitive accumulation . And, even to the present day, Liverpool "respectability" is the Pindar of t he slave-trade which-compare the work of Aikin [ 1 7 9 5 ] already quoted-"has coincided with that spirit of bold adventure which has characterised the trade of Liverpool and rapidly carried it to its present state of prosperity; has occasioned vast employment for shipping and sailors, and greatly augmented the demand for the manufactures of the country" ( p . 3 39 ) . Liverpool employed in the slave-trade, iIi 1 73 0, 1 5 ships; in 1 7 5 1 , 5 3 ; in 1 760, 74; in 1 770, 96; and in 1 79 2 , 1 3 2 . \Vhilst the cotton industry introduced child-slavery i n England, it gave in the United States a stimulus to the transformation of the earlier, more or less patriarchal slavery, into a system of commercial exploitation . In fact, the veiled slavery of the wage-workers in Europe need ed, for its pedestal, slavery pure and simple in the new worl d . Tantre molis erat, t o establish t h e "eternal laws of Nature" o f the capitalist mode of production, t o complete t h e process of separa tion between labourers and conditions of labour, to transform, at one pole, the social means of production and subsistence into capi tal, at the opposite pole, the mass of the population into wage labourers, into "free labouring poor:.' that artificial product of modern society. If mon ey, according to Augier, "comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek," capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt. CHAPTER XXXI . GENESIS OF THE IND U STRIAL CAPITALIST The genesis of the industrial capitalist did not proceed in such a gradual way as that of the farmer. Doubtless many small guild-mas ters, and yet more independent small artisans, o r even wage-labourers, transformed themselves into small capitalists, and ( by gradually e� tending exploitation of wage-labour and corresponding accumulation) into full-blown capitalists. In the infancy of capitalist production, things often happened as in the infancy of mediaeval towns, where the question which of the escaped serfs should be master and which servant, was in great part decided by the earlier or later date of their flight. * * * *
*
*
The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, en slavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population. the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black skins, signa Ii sed the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production .
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These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accu mulation. On their heels treads the commercial war of .the European nations, with th e globe for a theatre. It begins with the revolt of the Netherlands from Spain, assumes giant dimensions i n England's Anti Jacobin \Var, and is still going on in the opium wars against China, &c. Th e different momenta of primitive accumulation distribute them selves now, more or less in chronological order, particularly over Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, and England . In England at the end of the 1 7th century, they arrive at a systematical combination, embracing the colonies, the national debt, the modern mode of taxa· tion, and the protectionist system. These methods depend in part on brute force, e .g . , the colonial system. But they all employ the power of the State, the concentrated and organised force of society, to has ten, hoth ouse fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode, and to shorten the transition. Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power. *
*
*
CHAPTER XXXI I . HISTORICAL TENDENCY O F CAPITALIST ACCUMULATION \Vhat does the primitive accumulation of capital, i . e . , its histori cal genesis, resolve itself into? In so far as it is not immediate trans formation of slaves and serfs into wage-labourers, and therefore a mere change of form, it only means the expropriation of the immediate producers, i.e., the dissolution of private property based on the labour of its owner. Private property, as the antithesis to social, collective property, exists only where the means of labour and the external conditions of labour belong to private individuals. But according as these private individuals are labourers or not labourers, private property has a different character. The number less shades, that it at first sight presents, correspond to the intermediate stages lying between these two extremes . The private property of the labourer in his means of production is the founda tion of petty industry, whether agricultural, manufacturing, or both; petty industry, again, is an essential condition for the devel opment of social production and of the free individuality of the labourer himself. Of course, this petty mode of production exist� also under slavery, serfdom, and other states of dependence . But it flourishes, it lets loose its whole ene rgy, it attains its adequate clas sical form, only where the labourer is the private owner of his own means of labour set in action by himself : the peasant of the land
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which he cultivates, the artisan of the tool which he handles as a virtuoso. This mode of production pre-supposes parcelling of the soil, and scattering of the other means of production. As it excludes the concentration of these means of production, so also it excludes c o-operation, division of labour within each separate process of production, the control over, and the productive application of the forces of Nature by society, and the free development of the social productive powers. It is compatible only with a system of produc tion, and a society, moving within narrow and more or less primi tive bounds. To perpetuate i t would be, as Pecqueur rightly says, "to decree universal mediocrity." At a certain stage of development it brings forth the material agencies for its own dissolution . From that moment new forces and new passions spring up in the bosom of society; but the old social organisation fetters them and keeps them down . It must be annihilated; it is annihilated. Its annihila tion, the transformation of the individualised and scattered means of production into socially concentrated ones, of the pigmy prop erty of the m any into the huge property of the few, the expropria tion of the gr.eat mass of the people from the soil, from the means of subsistence, and from the means of labour, this fearful and pain ful expropriation of the mass of the people forms the prelude to the history of capital. It comprises a series of forcible methods, of which we have passed in review only those that have been epoch making as methods of the primitive accumulation of capital. The expropriation of the immediate producers was accomplished with merciless Vandalism, and under the stimulus of passions the most infamous, the most sordid, the pettiest, the most meanly odious. Self-earned private property, that is based, so to say, on the fusing together of the isolated, independent labouring-individual with the conditions of h is labour, is supplanted by capitalistic private prop erty, which rests on exploitation of the nominally free labour of others, i.e., on wage-labour. As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decom posed the old society from top to b ottom, as soon as the labourers are turned into proletarians, their means of labour into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialisation of labour and further transformation of the land and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form . That which · is now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many labourers. This expropri ation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capi talistic production itself, by the centralisation of capital. One capi talist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralisation, or this expropriation of many capitalists by a few, develop, on an
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The Critique of Capitalism
ever-extending scale, the co-operative form of the labour-process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultiva tion of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labou r into instruments of labour only usable in common, the economis ing of all means of production by their use as the means of produc tion of combined, socialised labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world-market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime . Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of pro duction, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist privat.e property. This is the first negation o f individual private property, as founded on the labour of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability O'f a law of Nature, its own negation . It is the nega tion of negation . This does not re-establish · private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisi tions of the capitalist era : i.e., on co-operation and the possession in common o f the land and of the means of production. The transformation of scattered private property, arising from individual labour, into capitalist private property is, naturally, a process, incomparably more protracted, violent, and difficult, than the transformation of capitalistic private property, already practi cally resting on socialised production, into socialised property. I n the former case, w e h a d the expropriation o f the mass o f the people by a few usurpers; in the latter, we have the expropriation of a few � surpers by the mass of the people.
C apital, Volume Three KARL IVI ARX Volumes Two and Three of Capital, left i n incomplete manuscript by Marx, were later e d ited and brought out by Engels. Two excerpts from Volume Three are presented here. The first
( whose
title has been given by the editor o f this reader ) gives
Marx's vision o f man in a future condition of freedom-creative leisure made possible by machine industry and the worldwide proletarian revolu tion that, as he saw it, was destined to liberate man's productive activity from the fetters of capitalist acquisitiven ess. But there would remain, i n this realm o f freedom, a residual realm of necessity : the labour time required to produce needed goods under even the most advanced technology. The second selection i s the famous last chapte r of Volume Three, enti tled "Classes," i n. which the manuscript breaks off after Marx has asked : "What constitutes a class?" In fact, there is no mystery about his answer. A class, in Marx's view, is a special form of the division of labor in society. *
On the Realm of Necessity and the Realm of Freedom We have se e n that the capitalist process of production is a his torically determined form of the social process of production in general. The latter is as m uch a production process of material con ditions of human life as a process taking place under specific histor ical and economic production relations, producing and reproducing these production relations themselves, and thereby also the bearers of this process, their material conditions of existence and their mutual relations, i.e., their particular socio-economic form . For the aggregate of these relations, in which the agents of this production stand with respect to Nature and to one another, and in which they produce, is precisely society, considered -from the standpoint of� its economic structure. Like all its predecessors, the capitalist proc ess of production proceeds under definite material conditions, which are, however, simultaneously the bearers of definite social relations entered into by individuals in the process of reproducing * See,
for
example,
his
statement
in
The Eighteenth Brumaire 01 Louis Bonaparte (p. 6 0 8 , below ) : "In so far as m i l l i ons of iamilies live under economic conditions o f existence that
43 9
divide their mode of life, their inter ests and their culture from those of the other classes, and p ut them in hostile contrast to the latter, they form a class."
440
The Critique of Capitalism
their life. Those conditions, like these relations, are o n the one
hand r esu l ts and creations of the of production; they are produced and reprodu ce d by it. We s a w also that capital-and the capitalist i s merely cap ita l personified and functions in the process of p rod u ctio n solely as th e agent of ca p i t a l - in its corresponding social process of production, pumps a d e fi n i te qu anti t y o f surplus labour out o f the direct p ro ducers, or labourers ; capital obtains this s ur pl u s l abour withou t an equivalent, a n d in essence it always r ema in s forced labour-no matter how m u ch it may seem to result from free contractual agre e m e n t . This s u rp l us labour appears as s u r pl u s value, and this su rplus value exists as a surplus pro d u c t . S u rpl us labour in g enera l , as labour performed over and above the given r e q ui reme n t s , m ust always rema in . In the c apital i s t as well as in the slave system, etc . , it merely a s s um e s an a n tagon i st ic form a n d is supplemented by complete idlen ess of a stratum of society . A d e fi n ite quan tity of s u r plus labour is r eq u ired as insurance against accidents, and by the necessary and progressive ex p ans ion of the process of reproduction in keeping with the development o f the needs and the g r ow t h of population, which is called accu mulation from the v i e wp oi nt of the capitalist. It is one of the civ ili zi n g aspects of cap it a l that it enforces this su rp lus labour in a manner and under conditions which ar e more advantageous to the development of the productive forces, social relations" and the creation of the elements for a new and h ighe r form than under the preceding forms o f slavery, serfdom, etc. Thus it gives rise to a stage, on the one hand, in which coer cion and monopolization of so ci a l de ve l op ment ( including its mate rial and intellectual advantages ) by one portion o f society a t the expense of the other are eliminated; on the other hand, it creates the material means and embryonic conditions, making it possible in a higher form of society to combine this su r pl u s labour with a greater reduction of time devoted to material labo u r in general. For, depending on the development of labour pr od u cti v ity , s urp lus hand prerequisites, o n the other
ca p i t al is t
process
labour may be large in a small total working day, and relatively
small
in a l ar ge total working d a y .
If the necessary labour time = su rplus labour = 3 , then the total working day = 6 and the rate of surplus labour = 1 00 % . If the necessary labo ur = 9 and the surplus labour = 3, then the total working day = 1 2 and the rate of s u r p l u s labour only 3 3 Y3 % . In that case, i t depends upon the labour productivity h ow much use value shall be p ro duced in a definite time, hence also i n a d e fi ni te sur p lus labour time. The actual wealth o f society, and the possibility of constantly expanding its reproduction process, therefore, do not depend u p o n the duration of surplus labour, but upon its p ro d u ctivity a n d the more or less copious conditions of production under which it is 3 and the
Capital, Volume Three performed . I n
fact, the realm of freedom actually begins
441 only
where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane con siderations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production . Just a� the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and re produce life, so must civilized man, and he must do s o in all social forma tions and under all possible modes o f production. With his develop ment this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of h i s wants; bu t , at t h e s a m e t i m e , t h e forces o f production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it a s by t h e blind forces o f N ature; and achieving this with t h e least expenditure o f energy and u nder con ditions m o s t favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless s t i l l remains a realm o f necessity. Beyond it begins . that development of human energy which i s an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with the realm of necessity as its b a s i s . The shortening of the working day is its basic prerequisite.
Classes The owners merely of labour-power, owners of capital, a n d land owners, whose respective sources of income are wages, profit and ground-rent, i n o th e r words, wage-labourers, capitalists a n d land owners, constitute then three big classes of modern society based upon the capitalist mode o f production. I n England, modern society is indisputably most highly and clas sically developed i n economic structure. Nevertheless, even here the stratification o f classes does not appear i n its pure form. Middle a n d intermediate strata even here obliterate l i n e s of demarcation every where ( although incomparably less in rural dis tricts than in the cities ) . However,
this is immaterial
for our analysis. \Ve have
seen that the continual tendency and law of development Q f the capitalist mode of production is more and more to divorce the means of production from labour and more and more to concen trate the scattered means of production into large groups, thereby transforming labour into wage-labour and the means of production into capital. And to this tendency, on the other hand, corresponds t h e independent separation of landed property from capital and labour, or the transformation of all landed property into t h e form of landed property correspon ding to the capitalist mode of production. The first question to be answered is this : What constitutes a class?-a nd the reply to this follows naturally from the reply to
442
The Critique of Capitalism
another question, namely : \Vhat makes wage- labourers, capitali sts and landlords constitute the three great social classes ? At first glance-the identity of revenues and sources of revenue. There are three great social groups whose members, the individ uals forming them, live on wages, profit and ground - rent respectively, on the realisation of their labour-power, their capital, and their landed property. However, from this standpoint, physicians and officials, e.g. , would also constitute two classes, for they belong to two distin ct social groups, the members of each of these groups receiving th eir revenue from one and the same source . The same would also b e true of the infinite fragmentation of interest and rank into which the division of social labour splits labourers as well as capitalists and landlords-the latter, e.g., into owners of vineyards, farm owners, owners of forests, mine owners and owners of fisheries .1 1.
Here the man uscript breaks off.
Crisis Theory KARL l\ IARX B usiness cycles and the related though n o t identical topic o f economic crises fascinated Marx. He invested much time in their study and often ind icated how important he considered their impact on society and political systems. Yet h e left no developed account of his views o n crises. The selec tion presented here comes from works,
Theories of Surplus Value,
one o f
Marx's
most underappreciated
a three-volume work which has some
times been described as Volume Four o f
Capital. Capital
It is Chapter XVII o f this work, and not
proper, th a t contains
the best a n d most systematic discussion by Marx o f economic crises_ The discussion takes the form o f a n attack on Say's Law of Markets . This was a n argument, put forward by Jean-Baptiste Say ( 1 767-1 8 3 2 ) Mill
( 1 7 7 3-1 8 3 6 )
and accepted by David Ricardo
and James
( 1 7 7 2- 1 8 2 3 ) ,
for the
impossibility o f a sustained general glut ( of "overproduced" commodities ) . It is interesting that Marx's attack, like modern criticism o f Say, centers o n t h e potentially grave consequences f o r economic equilibrium o f t h e generali zation o f t h e money economy_ *
Ricard o's D enial of General Over-Prod uctio n . Possibility o f a C risis I nherent in t h e Inner Co ntradictions o f Commodity and Money *
*
*
So far as crises are concerned, all those writers who describe the real movement of prices, or all experts, who write in the actual situ� ation of a crisis, have been right in ignoring the allegedly theoret'i cal twaddle and in contenting themselves with the idea that what may be true in abstract theory-namely, that no gluts of the market and so forth are possible-is, nevertheless, wrong in practice. The constant recurrence of crises has in fact reduced the rigmarole of Say and others to a phraseology which is now only used in times of prosperity but is cast aside in times of crises. In the crises of the world market, the contradictions and antago nisms of bourgeois p roduction are strikingly revealed. I nstead of investigating the nature of the conflicting elements which erupt in the catastrophe, the apologists content themselves with denying the catastrophe itself and insisting, in the face of their regular and peri odic recurrence, that if production were carried on according to the * The above headnote was prepared by Thomas Ferguson. [R . T.]
443
444
The Critique of Capitalism
textbooks, crises would never occur. Thus the apologetics consist in the falsification of the simplest economic relations, and particula rly in clinging to the concept of unity in the face of contradiction. I f, for example, purchase and sale-or the metamorphosis of commodities-represent the unity of two p rocesses, or rather the movement of one process thro ugh two opposite phases , and thus essentially the unity of the two phases, the movement is essentially j ust as much the separation of these two phases and their becoming independent of each other. Since, however, they belong togethe r, the independence of the two correlated aspects can only show itself forcibly, as a destructive process. It is j ust the crises in which they assert their unity, the unity of the different aspects . The independ ence which these two linked and complementary phases assume in relation to each other is forcibly destroyed. Thus the crisis manifests the unity of the two phases that have become independent of each other. There woul d be no crisis without this inner unity of factors that are apparently indifferent to each other. But no, says the apolo getic economis t. Because there is this unity, there can be no crises . V/hich in turn means nothing but that the unity of contradictory factors excludes contradiction. In order to prove that capitalist production cannot lead to gen eral crises, all its conditions and distinct forms, all its ptinciples and specific features-in short capitalist production itself-are denied. In fact it is demonstrated that if the capitalist mode of p roduction had not developed in a specific way and become a unique form of social production, but were a mode of production dating back to the most rudimentary stages, then its peculiar �ontradictions and conflicts and hence also their eruption in crises would not exist. Following Say, Ricardo writes : "Productions are always bought by p roductions, o r by services; money is only the medium by which the exchange is effected" ( 34 1 ) . Here, therefore, firstly co m m o dity in which the contradiction between exchange-value and use-value exists, becomes mere product ( use-value ) and therefore the exchange of commodities is transformed into mere barter of prod ucts, of simple use-values. This is a return not only to the time before capitalist production, but even to the time before there was simple commodity p roduction; and the most complicated phenome non of capitalist production-the world market crises-is flatly denied, by denying the first condition of capitalist p roduction, namely, that the p roduct must be a commodity and therefore express itself as money and undergo the process of metamorphosis . Instead of speaking of wage-labour, the term "services" is used . This word again omits the specific characteristic of wage-labour and of its use-namely, that it increases the value of the commodities against which it is exchanged, that it creates surplus-value-and in doing so, it disregards the specific relationship through which money and ,
Crisis Theory
445
commodities are transformed into capital . "Service" is labour seen only as use-value ( which is a side issue in capitalist production ) j ust as the term "productions" fails to express the essence of commodity and its inherent contradiction . It is quite consistent that money is then regarded merely as an intermediary in the exchange of prod ucts, and not as an essential and necessary form of existence of the commodity which must manifest itself as exchange-value, as general social labour. Since the transformation of the commodity into mere use -value { p rodu c t ) obliterates the essence of exchange-value, it is j ust as easy to deny, or rather it is necessary to deny, that money is an essential as p ect of the commodity and that in the process of metamorphosis it is independent of the ori g inal form of the com modity. Crises a re thus reasoned out of existence here b y forgetting or denying the first elements of capitalist p roduction : the existence of the p roduct as a commodity, the duplication of the commodity in commodity and money, the consequent separation which takes place in the exchange of commodities and finally the relation of money or commodities to wag e labour I ncidentally, those economists are no better, who ( like John Stua r t Mill ) want to explain the crises by these simple possibilities of crisis contained in the metamorphosis of commodities-such as the separation between purchase and sale. These factors which explain the possibility of crises, by no means explain their actual occurrence . They do n ot explain why the phases of the process come into such conflict that their inner unity can only assert itself through a crisis, through a v iolent process. This separation appears in the crisis ; it i s the elementary form of the c risis To explain the crisis on the basis of this, its elementary form, is to explain the existence of the crisis by describing its most abstract form, that is to say, to explain the crisis by the crisis. Ricardo says : -
.
'
.
No man p roduces, but with a view to consume or sell, and h e never sells, b u t with an intention t o purchase some other com modity, which may be immediately useful to him, or which � may contribute to future production. By producing, then, he necessar ily becomes either the cons u me r of his own goods, or the pur chaser and consumer of the goods of some person . It is not to be sup p osed that he shoul d , for any length of time, be ill-informed of the commodities which he can most advantageously produce, to attain the object which he has in view, namely, the poss ession of other goods; and therefore, it is not probable that he will con tinually p roduce a commodity for which there is no dema nd. [Pp. 3 39-4 0 .] ,
This is the childish babble of a Say, but it is not worthy of Ricardo. In the first place no capitalist produces in order to con sume his product. And when speaking of capitalist production, it is ,
446
The Criti que of Capitalism
right to say tha t: "no man produces with a view to consume his own product, " even if he uses portions of his product for industrial consumption. B u t here the point in question is private consumption. Previously it was forgotten that the product is a commodity. Now even the social division of labour is forgotten . In a situation where men produce for themselves, there are indeed no crises, but neither is there capita list production. Nor have we ever h eard that the ancients, with their slave production ever knew crises, although individual producers among the ancients too, did go bankrupt. The first part of the alternative is nonsense. The second as wel l . A man who has produced does not have the choice of selling or not se l Iing. He must sell. I n the crisis there arises the very situation in which he cannot sell or can only sell below the cost-price or must even sell at a positive loss . \Vhat difference does it make, therefore, to him or to us that h e has produced in order to sell? The very question we want to solve is what has thwarted this good intention o f his? Further : he "never sells, but with an intention to purchase some other commodity, which may be immediately useful to him, or which may contribute to future production" ( p . 3 39 ) . \Vhat a cosy description of bourgeois conditions ! Ricardo even forgets that a perso n may sell in order to pay, and that these forced sales play a very significant role in th e crises. Th e capitalist's imme. diate object in selling, is to turn his commodity, or rather h is com· modity capital, back into money capital, and thereby to realise his profit. Consumption-revenue-is by no means' the guiding motive in this process, although it is for the person who only sells commod ities in order to transform them into means of subsistence. But this is not capitalist production, in which revenue appears as the resul t and not as the determining p urpose. Everyone sells first of all in order to sell, that is to say, in order to transform commodities into money. During th e crisis, a man may be very pleased, if he has sold his commodities without immediately thinking of a purchase. On the other hand, if the value that has been realised is again to be us,ed as capital, it must go through the process of reproduction, that is, it must be exchanged for labour and commodities. But the crisis is precisely the phase of disturbance and interruption of the process of reproduction. And this disturbance cannot be explained by the fact that it does not occur in those times when there is no crisi s . There is no doubt that no one "will continually produce a commodity for which there is no demand" ( p . 3 40 ) , but no one is talking about such an absurd hypothesis. Nor has it anything to d o with the problem . The immediate purpose of capitalist production is not "the possession of other goods," but the appropriation of value, of money, of abstract wealth .
Crisis Theory
447
Ricardo's statements here are also based on James Mill's proposi tion on the "metaphysical equilibirum of purchases and sales," which I examined previously-an equilibrium which sees only the unity, but not the separation in the processes of purchase and sale. Hence also Ricardo's assertion ( following James Mill ) : "Too much of a particular commodity may be p roduced, of which there may be such a glut in the market, as not to repay the capital expended on it; but this cannot be the case with respect to all commodities" (pp. 3 4 1 -42 ) . Money is not only "the medium by which the exchange is effected" ( p . 3 4 1 ) , but at the same time the medium by whic� the exchange of product with product is divided into two acts, which are independent of each other, and separate in time and space. \Vith Ricardo, however, this false conception of money is due to the fact that he concentrates exclusively on the quantitative determination of exchange-value, namely, that it is equal to a definite quantity of labour- time, forgetting on the other hand the qualitative character istic, that individual labour must p resent itself as abstract, general social labour only through its alienation . 1 That only particular commodities, and not all kinds of commodi ties, can form "a glut in the market" and that therefore over-pro duction can always only be partial, is a poor way out. I n the fi rst place, if we consider only the nature of the commodity, there is nothing to prevent all commodities from being super-abundant on the market, and therefore all falling below their price. \Ve are h ere only concerned with the factor of crisis. That is all commodities, apart from money [may be super-abundant] . [The proposition] the commodity must be converted into money, only means that : all commodities must do so . And j ust as the difficulty of undergoing this metamorphosis exists for an individual commodity, so it can exist for all commodities . The general nature of the metamorphosis of commodities-which includes the separation of purchase and sale just as it does their unity-instead of excluding the possibility of a general glut, on the contrary, contains the possibility of a general glut. Ricardo's and similar types of reasoning a re moreover based not on ly on the relation of purchase and sale, but also on that of demand and supply, which we have to examine only when consider ing the competition of capitals. As Mill says, purchase is s ale etc., therefore demand is supply and supply demand. But -they also fall apart and can become independent of each o ther. At a given 1 . That Ricardo [ regards ] money mere l y as means of circulation is synon ymous with his regarding exchange value as a merely transient form, and altogether as something purely formal
i n bourgeois or capitalist production, which i s consequently for h i m not a specific definite mode of production, but simply the mode o f production.
[Marx]
448
The Critique of Capitalism
moment, the supply of all commodities can be greater than the demand for all commodities, since the demand for the general com modity, money, exchange-value, is greater than th e demand for all particular commodities, in other words the motive to turn the com modity into money, to realise its exchange-value, prevails over the motive to transform the commodity again into use-value. If relation of demand and supply is taken in a wider and more concrete sense, then it comprises the relation of production and consumption as well . Here again the unity of these two phases, which does exist and which forcibly asserts itself during the crisis, must be seen as opposed to the separation and antagonism of these two phases, separation and antagonism which exist just as much, and are moreover typical of bourgeois p roduction. \Vith regard to the contradiction between pa,rtial and universal over-production, in so far as the existence of the former is affirmed in order to evade the latter, the following observation may be made : Firstly : Crises are usually preceded by a general inflation in prices of all articles of capitalist production . All of them therefore partici pate in the subsequent crash and at their former prices they cause a glut in the market. The market can absorb a larger volume of com modities at falling prices, at prices which have fallen below their cost-prices, than it could absorb at their former prices . The excess of commodities is always relative; in other words it is an excess at par ticular prices . The prices at which the commodities are then ab sorbed are ruinous for the producer or merchant. Secondly: For a crisis ( and therefore also for over-production ) to be general, it suffices for it to affect the principal commercial goods. Ricardo 's \Vrong Conception of the Relation B etween Production and Consumption Under the Conditions of Capitalism
Let us take a closer look at how Ricardo seeks to deny the possi bility of a general glut in the market : Too much of a particular commodity may be produced, of which there may be such a glut in the market, as not to repay the capital expended on it; but this cannot be the case with respect to all commodities; the demand for corn is limited by the mouths which a re to eat it, for shoes and coats by the persons who are to wea r them; but through a community, or a part of a community, may have as m uch corn, and as many hats and shoes, as it is able or may wish to consume, the same cannot be said of every com modity produced by nature or by art. Some would consume more wine, if they had the ability to procure it. Others having enough of wine, would to increase the quantity or improve the quality
Crisis Theory
449
of their furniture. Others might wish to ornament their grounds, or to enlarge their houses . The wish to do all or some of these is implanted in every man's breast; nothing is required but the
means, and nothing can afford the means, but an increase of pro duction. [Pp. 3 4 1 -42.]
Could there be a more childish argument? It runs like this : more of a particular commodity may be p roduced than can be consumed of it; but this cannot apply to all commodities at the same time. Because the needs, which the commodities satisfy, have no limits and all these needs are not satisfied a t the same time. On the con trary. The fulfillment of one need makes another, so to speak, latent. Thus nothing is required, but the means to satisfy these wants, and these means can only be provided through an increase in production. Hence no general overproduction is possibl e . \Vhat is th e purpose o f a l l this? I n periods of over-production, a large part of the nation ( especially the working class ) is less well pro vided tha n ever with corn, shoes etc., not to speak of wine and fur niture . If over-production could only occur when all the members of a nation had satisfied even their most urgent needs, there could never, in the history of bourgeois society up to now, have been a state of general over-production or even of partial over-production. \Vhen, for instance, the market is glutted by shoes o r calicoes or wines or colonial p roducts, does this perhaps mean that four-sixths of the nation have more than satisfied their needs in shoes, calicoes etc.? \Vhat after all has over-production to do with absolute needs? It is only concerned with demand that is backed by ability to pay. It is not a question of absolute oyer-production-over-p rod uction as s uc h in relation to the absolute need or the desire to possess com modities. In this sense there is neither partial nor general over-pro duction; and the one is not opposed to the other. But-Ricardo will say-when there are a lot of people who want shoes and calicoes, why do they not obtain the means to acquire them, by p roducing something which will enable them to buy shoes and calicoes? \Vould it not be even simpler to say : \Vhy do they' not produce shoes and calicoes for themselves? An even stranger aspect of over-production is that the workers, the actual producers of the very commodities which glut the market, are in need of these c ommodities . It cannot be said here that they should produce things in order to obtain them, for they have produced them and yet they have not got them. Nor can i t be said that a particular commodity gluts the market, because no one is in want of it. I f, therefore, it is even impossible to explain that partial over- produc tion arises because the demand for the commodities that glut the market has been more than satisfied, it is quite impossible to explain away universal over-production by declaring tha t needs, unsatisfied
450
The Critique of Capitalism
needs, exist for many of the commodities which are on the market. Let us keep to the example of the weaver of calico. So long as reproduction continued uninterruptedly-and therefore also the phase of this reproduction in which the product existing as a saleable commodity, the calico, was reconverted into money, at its value-so long, shall we say, the workers who produced the calico, also � onsumed a part of it, and with the expansion of reproduction, that IS to say, with accumulation, they were consuming more of it, or also more workers were employed in the p roduction of calico, who also consumed part of it. Crisis, \Vhich \Vas a Continge ncy, B ecomes a Certainty . The Crisis as the .Manifesta tion of All the Co ntradictio ns of Bourgeois Economy .
Now before we proceed further, the following m u s t be said : The possibility of crisis, which became apparent in the simple metamorphosis of the commodity, is once more demonstrated, and further developed, by the disjunction between the ( direct ) process of production and the process of circulation. As soon as these proc esses do not merge smoothly into one another but become inde pendent of one an other, the crisis is there. The possibility of crisis is indicated in the metamorphosis of the commodity like this : Firstly, the commodity which actually exists as use-value, and nominally, in its price, as exchange -value, must be transformed into money. C-M. I f this difficulty, the sale, is solved then the pur chase, M-C, presents no difficulty, since money is directly exchangeable for everything else. The use-value of the commodity, the usefulness of the labour contained in it, must be assumed from the start, otherwise it is no commodity a t all . I t is further assumed that the individual value of the commodity is equal to its social value, that is to say, that the labour-time materialised in it is equal to the socially necessary labour- time for the production of this com modity. The possibility of a crisis, in so far as it shows itself in the simple form of metamorphosis, thus only arises from the fact that the differences in form-the phases-which it passes through in the course of its progress, are in the first place necessarily complemen tary and secondly, despite this intrinsic and necessary correlation, they are distinct parts and forms of the process, independent of each other, diverging in time and space, separable and separated from each other. The possibility of crisis therefore lies solely in the separation of sale from purchase . It is thus only in the form of com modity that the commodity has to pass through this difficulty here .
Crisis Theory
451
As soon as it assumes the form of money it has got over this difficulty. Subsequently however this too resolves into the separation of sale and purchase. If the commodity could not be withdrawn from circulation in the form of money or its retransformation into commodity could not be postponed-as with direct barter-if p ur chase and sale coincided, then the possibility of crisis would, under the assumptions made, disappear. For it is ass umed that the com modity represents use-value for other owners of commodities . I n the . form of direct barter, the commodity is not exchangeable only if it has no use-value or when there are no other use-values on the other side which can be exchanged for it; therefore, only under these two conditions : either if one side has produced useless things or if the other side has nothing useful to exchange as an equivalent for the first use-value. In both cases, however, no exchange whatsoever would take place. But in so far as exchange did take place, its phases woul d not be separa ted. The buyer would be seller and the seller buyer. The critical stage, which arises from the form of the exchange-in so far as it is circulation-would therefore cease to exist, and if we say tha t the simple form of metamorphosis com prises the possibility of crisis, we only say that in this form itself lies the possibility of the rupture and separation of essentially compli mentary phases. But this applies also to the content. In direct barter, the bulk of production is intended by the producer to satisfy his own needs, or, where the division of labour is more developed, to satisfy the needs of his fellow producers, needs that are known to him . \Vhat is exchanged as a commodity is the surplus and it is unimportant whether this surplus is exchanged or not. In commodity production the conversion of the product into money, the sale, is a conditio sine qua non. Direct production for personal needs does not take place. Crisis results from the impossibility to sell . The difficulty of trans forming the commo dity-the particular product of individual labour-into its opposite, money, i .e . , abstract general social labou r, lies in the fact that money is not the particular product of individ ual labour, and that the person who has effected a sale, who there fore has commodities in the form of money, is not compelled to buy again at once, to transform the money again into a particular product of individual labour. In barter this contradiction does not exist : no one can be a seller with out being a buyer or a buyer with out being a seller. The difficulty of the seller-on the assumption that his commodity has use-value-only stems from the ease with which the buyer can defer the retransformation of money into com modity. The difficulty of converting the commodity into money, of selling it, only arises from the fact that the commodity must be turned into money but the money need not be immediately turned
452
The Critique of Capitalism
into commodity, and therefore sale and purchase can be separated. \Ve have said that this form contains the possibility of crisis, that is to say, the possibility that elements which are correlated, which are inseparable, are separated and consequently are forcibly reunite d, their coherence is violently asserted against their mutual independ. ence. Crisis is nothing but the forcible assertion of the unity of phases of the production process which have become independent of each other. The general, abstract possibility of crisis denotes no more than the most abstract form of crisis, without content, without a compel. ling motivating factor. Sale and purchase may fall apart . They thus represent potential crisis and their coincidence always remains a critical factor for the commodity. The transition from one to the other may, however, proceed smoothly. The most abstract form of crisis ( and therefore the formal possibility of crisis ) is th us the met amorphosis of the commodity itself; the contradiction of exchange. value and use-value, and furthermore of money and commodity, comprised within the unity of the commodity, exists in metamor. phosis only as an involved movement. The factors which turn this possibility of crisis into [an actual] crisis are not contained in this form itself; it only implies that the framework for a crisis exists. And in a consideration of the bourgeois economy, that is the important thing. The world trade crises must be regarded as the real concentration and forcible adjustment of all the contradictions of bourgeois economy. The individual factors, which are condensed in these crises, must therefore emerge and must be described in each sphere of the bourgeois economy, and the further we advance in our ' examination of the latter, the more aspects of this c onflict must be traced on the one hand, and on the other hand i t must be shown that its more abstract forms are recurring and are co�tained in the more concrete forms. It can therefore be said that the crisis in its first form i s the meta· morphosis of the commodity itself, the falling asunder of p urchase and sale. The crisis in its second form is the function of money as a means of payment, in which money has two different functions and figures in two different phases, divided from each other in time. Both these forms are as yet quite abstract, although the second is more concrete than the fi rst. To begin with therefore, in considering the reproduction process of capital ( wh ich coincides with its circulation ) it is necessary to prove that the above forms are simply repeated, or rather, that only here they receive a content, a basis on which to manifest them selves. Let- us look at the movement of capital from the moment in which it leaves the production process as a commodity in order once
Crisis Theory
453
again to emerge from it as a commodity. If we abstract here from all the other factors determining its content, then the total com modity capital and each individual commodity of which it is made up, must go through the process C-M-C, the metamorphosis of the commodity. The general possibility of crisis, which is con tained in this form-the falling apart of purchase and sale-is thus contained in the movement of capital, in so far as the latter is also commodity and nothing but commodity. From the interconnection of the metamorphoses of commodities it follows, moreover, that one commodity is transformed into money because another is retrans formed from the form of money into commodity. Furthermore, the separation of purchase and sale appears here in such a way that the transformation of one capital from the form commodity into the form money, m us t correspond to the retransformation of the other capital from the form money into the form commodity. The first metamorphosis of one capital must correspond to the second meta morphosis of the other; one capital leaves the production process as the other capital returns into the production process . This inter twining and coalescence of the processes of reproduction or circula tion of different capitals is on the one hand necessitated by the divi sion of labour, on the other hand it is accidental; and thus the definition of the content of crisis is already fuller. Secondly, however, with regard to the possibility of crisis arising from the form of money as means of payment, i t appears that capi tal may provide a much more concrete basis for turning this possi bility into reality. For example, the weaver must pay for the whole of the constant capital whose elements have been produced by the spinner, the flax-grower, the machine-builder, the iron and timber manufacturer, the producer of coal, etc. In so far as these latter pro duce constant capital that only enters into the production of con stant capital, without entering into the cloth, the final commodity, they replace each other's means of production through the exchange of capital. Supposing the weaver now sells the cloth for £ 1 , 000 to the merchant but in return for a bill of exchange so that moriey figures as means of payment. The weaver for his part hands over the bill of exchange to t h e banker, to whom h e m a y thus be repaying a debt or, on the other hand, the banker may negotiate the bill for him. The flax-grower has sold to the spinner i n return for a bill of exchange, the spinner to the weaver, ditto the machine manufac turer to the weaver, ditto the iron and timber manufacturer to the machine manufacturer, ditto the coal producer to the spinner, weaver, machine manufacturer, iron and timber supplier. Besides, the iron, coal, timber and flax producers have paid one another with bills of exchange. Now if the merchant does not pay, then the weaver cannot pay his bill of exchange to the banker. The flax-grower has drawn on the spinner, the machine manufac-
454
The Critique of Capitalism
turer on the weaver and the spinner. The spinner cannot p ay because the weaver cannot pay, neither of them pay the ma chine manufacturer, and the latter does not pay the iron, timber or co al supplier. And an of these in turn, as they cannot realise ' the value of their commodities, cannot replace that portion of value which is to replace their constant capital Thus the general crisis comes into being. This is nothing other than the possibility of crisis describ ed when dealing with money as a means of payment; b u t here-in cap italist production-we can already see the connection between the mutual claims and obligations, the sales and purchases, through which the possibility can develop into actuality. In any case : I f purchase and sale do not get bogged down, and therefore do not require forcible adjustment-and, on the other hand, money as means of payment functions in such a way that claims are mutually settled, and thus the contradiction inherent in money as a means of payment is not realised-if therefore neither of these two abstract forms of crisis become real, no crisis exists. No crisis can exist unless sale and purchase are separated from one another and come into conflict, or the contradictions contained in mone}( as a means of payment actually come into play; crisis, there fore, cannot exist without manifesting itself at the same time in its simple form, as the contradiction between sale and purchase and th� . c�mtradiction of money as a means of payment. But these are merely forms, general possibilities of crisis, and hence also forms, abstract forms, of actual crisis. In them, the nature of crisis appears in its simplest forms, and, in so far as this form is itself the simplest content of crisis, in its simplest content. But the content is not yet substantiated. Simple circulation of money and even the circulation of money as a means of payment-and both come into being long before capitalist production, while there are no crises-are possible and actually take place without crises . These forms alone, therefore, do not explain why their crucial aspect becomes' prominent and why the potential contradiction contained in them becomes a real con tradictio n . This shows h o w insipid the economists a r e who, when they are no longer able to explain away the phenomenon of over-production and crises, are content to say that these forms contain the p ossibil ity of crises, that it is therefore accidental whether or not crises occur and consequently their occurrence is itself merely a matter of chance.
The contradictions inherent in the circulation of commodities, which are further developed in the circulation of money-and thus, also, the possibilities of crisis-reproduce themselves, automatically, in capital, since developed circulation of commodities and of money, in fact, only take place on the basis of capital. But no� the further development of the potential crisis has to be
Crisis Theory
4 55
traced-the real crisis can only be educed from the real movement
. . of capitalist production, competition and credit-in so far as crisis arises out of the special aspects of capital which are p eculiar to it as
capital, and not merely comprised in its existence as commodity and money. The mere ( direct ) p roduction p rocess of capital in itself, cannot add anything new in this context. In order to exist at all, its condi tions are presupposed. The first section dealing with capital-the direct process of production-does not contribute any new element of crisis. Although it does contain such an element, because the pro duction process implies appropriation and hence production of sur pl u s v alue But this cannot be shown when dealing with the p roduc tion process itself, for the latter is not concerned with the realisa tion either of the reproduced value or of the surplus-value. This can only emerge in the circulation p rocess which is in itself also a process of rep roduction. Furthermore it is necessary to describe the circulation or repro duction process before dealing with the already existing capital-cap ital and p rofit s ince we have to explain, not only h ow capital pro duces, but also how c a pital is produced. But the actual movement starts from the existing capital-i .e., the actual movement denotes developed capitalist production, which starts from and presupposes its own basis . The process of reproduction and the predisposition to . crisis which is further developed in it, are therefore only partially described under this heading and require further elaboration in the chapter on "Capital and Profit." The circulation process as a whole or the reproduc tion p rocess of capital as a whole is the unity of its production ph ase and its circu lation phase, so that it comprises both these processes or phases . Therein lies a further developed possibility or abstract form of crisis. The economists who deny crises consequently assert only the unity of these two phases If they were only separate, without bei n g a unity, then their unity could not be established by force and there could be' no crisis . If they were only a unity without being separate, then no violent separation would be possible implying a crisis . Crisis is the forcible establishment of unity between elements that have become independent and the enforced separation from one another of elements w hich are essentially one. -
.
""",,,"
.
On the Forms of Crisis
Therefore : 1 . The general p ossibility of crisis is given in the process of meta morp hosis of cap ital itself, and in two ways : in so far as money functions as means of circulation, [ the possibility of crisi s lies in] the separation of p urchase and sale; and i n so far as money func-
456
The Critique of Capitalism
tions as means of payment, it has two different aspects, i t acts as measure of value and as realisation of value. These two aspects [may] become separated. I f in the interval between them the value has changed, if the commodity at the moment o f its sale is not
worth what it was worth at the moment when m oney was
acting as a measure of value and therefore a s a measure o f the recip _ rocal obligations, then the obligation c a n n o t be met f r o m the
pro ceeds of the sale of the commodity, a n d therefore the whole series of transactions which retrogressively depend on this one transaction, cannot be settled . If even for only
a limited period of time the com
modity cannot be sold then, althoug� its value has not altered,
money cannot function as means of payment, since it must functio n as such in a definite given period of time. B u t as the s a m e sum of money acts for a whole series of reciprocal transactions and obliga_ tions here,
inability to pay occurs not only a t one, but at many crisis arises . These are the formal possibilities of crisis. The form mentioned
points, h ence a
fi rst is possible without the latter-that i s to say, crises are possible without credit, without money functioning as a means of pay ment. B ut the second form is not possible
without the fi rst
-
that i s to say,
without the separation between purchase and sale . But i n the latter case, the crisis occurs not only because the commodity i s unsaleable, b u t because i t is not saleable within a
particular period of time, an d un sale ability of the commodity, but from the non-fulfilment of a whole series of payments which depend o n the sale o f this particular com modity within this particular period of time. This is the characteris tic form of money crises. I f the crisis appears, therefore, because purchase and sale become separated, i t becomes a money crisis, as soon as money has devel oped as means of payment, and this second form of crisis foll{)ws as a matter o f c ourse, when the first occurs. In investigating why the general possibility of crisis turns into a real crisis, in investigating the conditions of crisis, i t i s therefore quite superfluous to con cern oneself with the forms of crisis which arise out of the develop men t of money a s means of payment. This is precisely why econo mists like to suggest that this obvious form i s the cause of crises. the crisis arises and derives its character not only from the
( I n so far as the devel opment of money as means of payment is linked with the development of credit and {)f
excess credit the
causes of the latter have to be examined, but this is not yet the place to do i t . )
2. In so far as crises arise from changes in prices and revolutions in prices, which do not coincide with changes in the values o f com modities, they natu rally cannot be investigated during the examina
tion of capital in general, in which the prices of commodities are assumed to be
identical with the values of commoditie s .
Crisis Theory
457
3. The general possibility of crisis is the formal metamorphosi s of
capital itself, the separation, in time and space, of purchase and sale. But this is never the cause of the crisis. For it is nothing but the most general form of crisis, i.e., th e crisis itself in its most general ised expression. But it cannot be said that the abstract form of crisis is the cause of crisis. If one asks what its cause is, one wants to know why its abstract form, the form of its possibility, turns from possibility into actuality. 4. The general conditions of crisis, in so far as they are independ ent of price fluctuations ( whether these are l inked with the credit system or not ) as distinct from fluctuations in value, must be expli c able from the general conditions of capitalist production. (A crisis can arise : 1 . in the course of the reconversion [of money] into productive capital; 2 . through changes in the value of the elements of productive capital, particularly of raw material, for example when there is a decrease in the quantity of cotton har vested. I ts value will thus rise. vVe are not as yet concerned with prices here but with values. ) First Phase. The reconversion of money into capital. A definite level of production or reproduction is assumed . Fixed capital can be regarded here as given, as remaining unchanged and not enter ing into the process of the creation of value. Since the reproduction of raw material is not dependent solely on the labour employed on it, but on the productivity of this labour which is bound up with natural conditions, it is possible for the volume, the amount of the p roduct of the same quantity of labour, to fall ( as a result of bad harvests ) . The value of the raw material therefore rises; its volume decreases, in other words the proportions in whic.h the money has to be reconverted into the various component parts of capital in order to continue production on the former scale, are upset. More must be expended on raw material, less remains fo r labour, and it is not possible to absorb the same quantity of labour as before. Firstly this is physically impossible, because of the deficiency in raw material . Secondly, it is impossible because a greater portion of the value of the product has to be converted into raw material, thus leaving less for conversion into variable capital. Reproduction cannot be repeated on the same scale. A part of fixed capital stands idle and a part of the workers is thrown out on the streets. The rate of profit falls because the value of constant capital has risen as against that of variable capital and less variable capital is employed. The fixed charges-interests, rent-which were based on the anticipation of a constant rate of profit and exploitation of labour, remain the same and in part cannot be paid. Hence crisis. Crisis of labour and crisis of capital. This is therefore a disturbance in the reproduction proc ess due to the increase in the value of that part of constant capital which has to be replaced out of the value of the product. Moreover,
458
The Critique of Capitalism
although the rate of profit is decreasing, there is a rise in, the pric e of the product. If this product enters into other spheres of p r oduc
tion as a means of production, the rise in its price will result in th e same disturbance in reproduction in these spheres . If it enters into general consumption as a means of subsistence, it either enters also into the consumption of the workers or not. If it does so, then its effects will be the same as those of a disturbance in variable capital, of which we shall speak later. But in so far as it enters into genera l consumption it may resul t ( if its consumption is not reduced ) in a diminished demand for other products and consequently prevent their reconversion into money at their value, thus disturbing the other aspect of their reproduction-not the reconversion of mone), into productive capital but the reconversion of commodities into money. In any case, the volume of p rofits and the volume of wages is reduced in this branch of production thereby reducing a part of the necessary returns from the sale of commodities from other branches of production. Such a shortage of raw material may, however, occur not only because of the influence of harvests or of the natural productivity of the labour which supplies the raw material . For if an excessive por tion of the surplus-value, of the additional capital, is laid out in machinery etc. in a particular branch of production, then, although the raw material would have been sufficient for the old l evel of pro duction, it will be insufficient for the new. This therefore arises from the disproportionate cOIlversion of additional capital into its various elements . It is a case of over-production of fixed capital and gives rise to exactly the same phenomena as occur in the first case. ( See t h e previous page . ) 2 Or they [the crises] are due to an over-production of fixed capi tal and therefore a relative under-production of circulating capital . Since fixed capital, like circulating, consists o f commodities, it is quite ridiculous that the same economists who admit the ov e r-pro duction of fixed capital, deny the over-production of commodities. 2. In the m a n u script, the upper left hand corner of the ne xt page has been torn away. Consequently, out of the fi r s t nine lines o f the text, only the right ends of six lines have been pre served. This does n o t make i t possible t o reproduce the complete text here, but it does permit u s t o surmise that Marx speaks here o f crises which arise "out o f the] revolution in the value of the variable capital." The "in creased price o f the necessary means 0/ subsistence" caused, for example, by a poor harvest, leads to a rise in costs f o r those workers who "are set in motion by variable capital." "At the same time, t h i s rise" causes a fall in the d e m a n d for "all other commodities
[
that do not enter into tbe consumption" o f the workers. I t is therefore impossi ble "to sell the commodities a t their value ; the first phase in t heir reproduc tion." the transformation o f the com modity i nto money, i s interrupted. The increased price o f the means of subsis tence thus leads t o "crisis in other branches" o f production. The two last lines of the demaged part o f the page seem t o summarize this train of thought, by saying that crises can arise as a result of increased prices of raw materials, "whether these raw materials enter as raw materials into constant capital or as means o f subsistence" i n t o the consumption of the wor kers.
Crisis Theory
459
5. Crises arising from disturbances in t � e first phase of ��pro � uc tion: that is to say, interrupted conversIOn of commoditIes mto m oney or interruption of sale . In the case of crises of the first sort
[which result from the rise in the price of raw materials1 the crisis arises from interruptions in the f1.owing back of the elements of productive capital . The Contradicti on B etween t h e I mpetuous Developmen t of th e Productive Powers and the Limitations of Consumptio n Leads to Over Productio n. Th e Th eory of the I mpossibility of General Over-Prod uction Is Essentially Apologetic in Tendency.
The word over-production i n itself leads to error. So long as the most urgent needs of a large part of society are not satisfied, or only the most immediate needs are satisfied, there can of course be absolutely no talk of an over-production of products- in the sense that the amount of products is excessive in relation to the need for them . On the contrary, it must be said that on the basis of capital ist production, there is constant under-production in this sense. The limits to production are set by the p rofit of the capitalist and in no way by the needs of the producers . But over-production of p roducts and over-production of commodities are two entirely different things . If Ricardo thinks that the commodity form makes no differ ence to the product, and furthermore, that commodity circulation differs only formally from barter, that in this context the exchange value is only a fleeting form of the exchange of things, and that money is therdore merely a formal means of circulation-then this in fact is in line with his presupposition that the bourgeois mode of production is the absolute mode of production, hence it is a mode of production with out any definite specific characteristics, its dis tinctive traits are merely forma l . He cannot therefore admit that the bourgeois mode of production contains within itself a barrier to the free development of the productive forces, a barrier which comes to the surface in crises and, in particular, in over-production-the basic phenomenon in crises . Ricardo saw from the passages of Adam Smith, which he quotes, approves, and therefore also repeats, that the limitless "desire" for all kinds of use.values is always satisfied on the basis of a state of affairs in which the mass of producers remains more or less restricted to necessities-"food" and other "necessaries"-that con sequently this great majority of producers remains more or less excluded from the consumption of wealth-in so far as wealth goes
460
The Critique of Capitalism
beyond the bounds of the necessary means of subsistence. This was indeed also the case, and to an even higher degree, in the ancient mode of production which depended on slavery. But the ancients never thought of transforming the surplus-product int o capital. Or at least only to a very limited extent. (The fact that the hoarding of treasure in the narrow sense was widespread among them shows how much surplus-product lay completely idle . ) They used a large part of the surplus-product for unproductive expendi
ture on art, religious works and public works . Still less was their pro_
duction directed to the release and development of the material pro ductive forces-division of labour, machinery, the application of the powers of nature a n d science to private productio n . In fact, by and large, they never went beyond handicraft labour. The wealth which they produced for private con s umption
was
therefore relatively
small and only appears great because it was amassed in the h ands of a few persons, wh o, incidentally, did n o t know what to do with it. Although,
therefore,
there was
no over-production a m o n g the
ancients, there was over-consumption by the rich, which in the final periods o f Rome and Greece turned into mad extravagance. The few trading peoples among them lived partly a t the expense of all these essentially poor nations. I t is the uncon ditional development o f the productive forces and therefore mass production o n the basis of a mass of producers who are confined within the bounds of the necessary means of subsistence o n the one h a n d and on the other, the barrier set up by the capitalists' profits, which [forms] the basis of modern over-production. All the objections which Ricardo and others raise against over production etc. rest on the fact that they regard bourgeois produc tio n either as a mode o f production in which no distinction exists between purchase and sale-direct barter-or as social production, implying that society, as if according to a p l a n , distributes its means of production and productive forces in the degree and meas ure which is required for the fulfilment of the various social needs, so that each sphere of production receives the quota of social capital required to satisfy the corresponding need. This fiction arises entirely from the inability to grasp the specific form of bourgeois production and this inability in turn arises from the obsession that bourgeois prod uction is production as such, just like a ma.n who believes in a particu lar religion and sees it as the religion, and every thing outside of it only as false religions. On the contrary, the question that has to be answered is: since, on the basis of capitalist production, everyone works for himself and a particular labour must at the same time appear as its opposite, as abstract general la bour and in this form as socia l labour-how is it possible to achieve the necessary balance and interdepen dence of
Crisis Theory
461
t h e various spheres of production, their dimensions and t h e propor tions between them, except through the constant neutralisation of a constant d isharmony? This is admitted by t hose who speak of adjustments through competition, for these adjustments always pre suppose that there is something to adjust, and therefore that har
mony is always only a result of the movement which neutralises the existing disharmony. That is why Ricardo admits that a glut of certain commodities is possible. \Vhat is supposed to be impossible is only a simultaneous
general glut of the market. The possibility of over-production in any particular sphere of production is ·therefore not denied. It is th e
simultaneity of t h i s phenomenon f o r all spheres of production which is said to be impossible and therefore makes impossible [gen eral] over-production and thus a general glut of the market. ( This expression must always be taken cum grano salis, since in t imes of general over-production, the over-production in some sp heres is always only the result, the consequence, of over-production in the leading articles of commerce; [it is] always only relative, i.e., over production because over-production exists in other spheres . ) Apologetics turns this into its very opposite. [There i s only] over-production in the leading articles of commerce, in which a lone, active over-production shows itself-these are on the whole articles which can only be produced on a m ass scale a nd b y factory methods (also in agriculture) , because over-production exists in those a rticles in which relative or passive over-production manifests itself. Accord ing to this, over-production only exists because over-production is not universal. The relativity of over-production-that actual over production in a few spheres calls forth over-production in others-is expressed in this way:
There is
nO
universal over-production,
because if over-p roduction were universal, all sph e res of production would retain the same relation to one another; therefore universal over-production is proportional production which excludes over-pro duction. And this is supposed to be an argument against universal over-production. For, since universal over-production in the absolute sense would not be over-production but only a greater than usual development of the productive forces in all spheres of production, it is alleged that actual over-production, which is precisely not this non-existent, self-abrogating over-production,
does not exist-al
though it only eXists because it is not this .
1£ this miserable sophistry is more closely examined, it amounts
to this: Suppose, that there is over-production in iron, cotton goods, linen, silk, woollen cloth e tc.; then it cannot b.e said, for example, that too little coal has been produced and that this is the reason for the above over-production. For that over-production of iron etc . involves an exactly similar over-production of coal, as, say, the over-
462
The Critique of Capitalism
production of woven cloth does of yarn. (Over-production of yam as
compared with cloth, iron as compared with machinery, etc.,
could occur. This would always be a relative over-production of COn stant capital.) There cannot, therefore, be any question of the under-production of those articles whose over-production is implied because they enter as an element, raw material, auxiliary material or means of production, into those articles (the "particular commodity of which too much may be produced, of which there may be such a glut in the market, as not to repay the capital expended on it" (pp. 341-42), whose positive over-production is precisely the fact to be explained. Rather, it is a question of other articles which belong directly [be]
to
[other]
spheres
of
production
and. [can]
neither
subsumed under the leading articles of commerce which,
according to the assumption, have been over-produced, nor be attributed to spheres in which, because they supply th� intermedi
ate product for the leading articles of commerce, production must have reached at least the same level as in the final phases of the product-although there is nothing to prevent production in those spheres from having gone even further ahead thus causing an over production
within
the
over-production.
For
example,
although
sufficient coal must have been produced in order to keep going all those industries into which coal enters as necessary condition of pro duction, and therefore the over-production of coal is implied in the
over-production of iron, yarn etc. (even if coal was produced only in it is also pos
proportion to the production of iron and yarn [etc.]),
sible that more coal was produced than was required even for the over-production of iron, yarn etc. This is not only possible, but very probable. For the production of coal and yarn and of all other spheres of production which produce only the conditions or earlier phases of a product to be completed in another sphere, is governed not by the immediate demand, by the immediate production or reproduction, but by the degree, measure, proportion in which these are expanding. And it is self-evident that in this calculation, the target may well be overshot. Thus not enough has been produced of other articles such as, for example, pianos, precious stones, etc., they have been under-produced. (There are, however, also cases where the over-production of non-leading articles is not the result of over production, but where, on the contrary, under-production is the cause of over-production, as for instance when there has been a fail ure in the grain crop or the cotton crop.) The absurdity of this statement becomes particularly marked if it is applied to the international scene, as it has been by Say and others after him. For instance, that England has not over-produced but Italy has under-produced. There would have been no over-pro duction, if in the first place Italy had enough capital to replace the
Crisis Theory
463
English capital exported to Italy in the form of commodities; and secondly if Italy had invested this capital in such a way that it pro duced those particular articles which are required by English capital -partly in order to replace itself and partly in order to replace the revenue yielded by it. Thus the fact of the actually existing over
production in England-in relation to the actual production in I taly -would not have existed, but only the fact of imaginary under-pro duction in Italy; imaginary only because it presupposes a capital i n I taly and a development of the productive forces th at d o not exist there, and secondly because it makes the equally utopian assump tion, that this capital which does not exist in Italy, has been employed in exactly the way required to make English supply and Italian demand, English and Italia n production, complementary to each other. In other w ords, this means nothing but: there would be no over-production, if demand and supply corresponded to each other, if the capital were distributed in such proportions i n all spheres of production, that the production of one article involved the consumption of the o ther, and thus i ts own consumption. There would be no over-producti on, if there were no over-produc tion. Since, h o wever, capitalist production can allow itself free rein only in certain spheres , under certain condi tions, there could be no ca pitalist production at all if it had to develop simultaneously and
evenly in all spheres. Because absolute over-production takes place in certain spheres, relative over-production occurs also in the spheres w here there has been no over-production. This explanation of over-production in one field by under-produc tion in another field therefore means merely that i f production were proportionate, there would be no over-production. The same coul d be said if demand and supply corresponded to each other, or i f all spheres provided equal opportunities f or capitalist production and its expansion-division o f labor, machinery, export to distant mar kets etc., mass production, i . e . , if all countries which traded with one another possessed the same capacity for production (and indeed for d ifferent and complementary production) . Thus over-production takes place because all these pious wishes a re not fulfilled. Or, in even more abstract form: There would be no over-production in one place, i f over-production took place to the same extent everywhere . B u t there is not enough capital to over-produce so universally, and therefore there is partial over-production. Let us examine this fantasy more closely: It is admit ted that there can be over-production in each particu lar industry. The only circumstance which could prevent over-pro duction in all industries simultaneously is, according to the asser tions made, the fact that commodity exchanges against commodity -i .e., recourse is taken to the supposed conditions of barter. B u t
464
The Critique of Capitalism
this loop-hole is blocked by the very fact that trade [under capital ist conditions] is not barter, and that therefore the seller of a com modity is not necessarily at the same time the buyer of another. This whole subterfuge then rests on abstracting from money and from the fact that we are not concerned with the exchange of prod ucts, but with the circulation of commodities, an essential part of which is the separation of purchase and sale. The circulation of capital contains within itself th e possibilities of interruptions. In the reconversion of money into its conditions of production, for example, it is not only a q uestion of transform_ ing money into the same use-values (in. kind), b ut for the repetition of the reproduction process [it is] essential that these use-values can again be obtained at their ol d value (at a lower value would of course be even bette r). A very significant part of these elements of reproduction, which consists of raw materials, can however rise in price for two reasons. Firstly, if the instruments of production increase more rapidly than the amount of raw materials that can be provided at the given time. Secondly, as a result of the variable character of the harvests . Th a t is why weather conditions, as Tooke rightly observes, play such an important part in modern industry. (Th e same applies to the means of subsistence in relation to wages.) The reconversion of money int o commodity can thus come up again st difficulties and can create the possibilities of crisis, jus t as well as can the conversion of commodity into money. \Vhen one examines sim ple circulation--':'not the circulation of capital'-these difficulties do not arise. (There are, besid es, a large number of other factors, conditions, possibilities of crises, which can only be exam ined when considering the concrete conditions, particularly the compe tition of capitals and credit.)
The over-production of commodities is denied b ut the over-pro luction of capital is admitted. Capital itself however consists of _ommodities or, in so far as it consis ts of money, it must be recon verted into commodities of o ne kind or another, in o rder to be able to function a s ca pital. What then does over-production of capital mean? Over-production of value destined to produce su rplus-value or, if one considers the material content, over-production of com modities destined for reproduction-that is, reproduction on too
large a scale, which is the same as over-production pure and simple . Defined more closely, this means nothing more than that too much has been produced for the purpos e of enrichment, or that too great a part of the product is intended not for consumption as reve nue, but for mal�ing more money (for accumulation) : not to satisfy the personal needs of its owner, but to give h im money, abstract social riches a n d capital, more power over the labour of others, i.e . , t o increase this power. This i s wh a t o n e side says . (Ricardo denies
Crisis Theory
465
it.) And the other side, how does it explain the over-production of commodities? By saying that production is not sufficiently diversi fied, that certain articles of consumption have not been produced i n sufficiently l a r g e quantities. Tha t it i s not a m a t t e r of industrial con sumption is obvious, for the manufacturer who over-produces linen, ' thereby necessarily increases his demand for yarn, machinery, labour etc . I t is therefore a qu estion of personal consumption. Too much linen has been produced, but perhaps too few oranges. Previously the existence of money was denied, in order to show [that there was no] separation between sale and purchase. Here the existence of capital is denied, i n order to transform the capitalists into people who carry out the simple operation C-M-C and who produce for individual consumption and not as capitalists with the aim of enrichment, i.e., the reconversion of part ·of the surplus-vahie into capital . But the statement that there is too much capital, a f t e r all means merely t hat too little is consumed as revenue, and t hat more cannot be consumed in the given conditions . (Sismondi.) Why does the producer of linen demand from the producer of c orn, that he should consume more linen , or the latter demand t hat the linen manufacturer should consume more corn? \Vhy does the man who produces linen not h imself convert a larger part o f his revenue (s u r plus-value) into linen and the farmer into corn? So far as each i ndi vidual is concerned, it will be admitted that his desire for capitalisa tion (apart from the limits o f his needs) prevents him from doing this. But for all of them collectively, this is not admitted. (We are entirely leaving out of account h ere that element of crises which arises from the fact that commodities are reproduced more cheaply than they were produced . Hence the depreciation of the commodities on the market.)
In world market crises, all the contradictions of bourgeois produc
tion erupt collectively; in particular crises (particular in their con tent and in exte n t) the eruptions are only sporadical, isolated and one-sided.
Over-production is specifically conditioned by the general law of the production of capital: t o produce to t h e limit set by t h e produc tive forces, that is to say, to exploit the maximum amount of labour with the given amount of capital, without any consideration for the actual limits of the market o r the needs backed by the ability to pay; and this is carried out through continuous expansion of repro duction and accumulation, and therefore constant reconversion of revenue into capital, while on the other hand, the mass of the pro ducers remain tied to the average level of needs, and m ust remain tied to it according to the nature of capitalist production.
·
"
PART III
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
Manifesto of the Communist Party MARX AND ENGELS
In 1836 German radical workers living in Paris formed a secret association called "League of the
Just."
At congresses in London in 1847 it changed
its name to "Communist League" and commissioned Marx and Engels, who had recently become members, to draw up a manifesto
on
its behalf.
Both men prepared first drafts. Engels' draft, preserved under the title "The Principles of. Communism," was in the form of a catechism with twenty-five questions and answers. Marx is believed to have had the greater hand in giving the
Communist Manifesto its
final form as both a program
matic statement and a compressed summary of the Marxian theory of his tory. It was originally published in London in February, 1848, and brought out in
a
French translation in Paris shortly before the insurrection of
June,
1848, there. It has become the most widely read and influential single doc ument of modern socialism. The text given here is that of the English edi tion of 1888, edited by Engels.
Preface to the German Edition of 1872 The Communist League, an international association of workers, which could of course be only a secret one under the conditions obtaining at the time, commissioned the undersigned, at the Con gress held in London in November 1847, to draw up for publica� tion a detailed theoretical and practical programme of the . Party� Such was the origin of the following Manifesto, the manuscript of which travelled to London, to be printed, a few weeks before the February Revolution.1 First published in German, it has been republished in that language in at least twelve different editions in Germany, England and America. It was published in English for the first time in 1850 in the Red Republican, London, translated by Miss Helen Macfarlane, and in 1871 in at least three different .'ranslations in America. A French version first appeared in Paris shortly before the June insurrection of 1848 and recently in Le Soci1. The Fehruary Revolution in France, 1848. 469
470
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
aliste of New York. A new translation is in the course of prepara tion. A Polish version appeared in London shortly after i t was first published in Germ a n . A Russian translation was published in Geneva in the sixties. Into Danish, too, it was transla t ed shortly after its first appearance. However much the state of things may have altered during the last twenty-five years, the general principles laid down in this Mani festo are, on the w hole, as correct today as ever . H ere and there some detail might be improved . The practical applica tion of the principles will depend, as the Ma nifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolu tionary measures p roposed a t the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today. In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry in the last twenty-five years, and of the accompanying improved and e xtended party orga nisation of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune , where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in som e details become antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the C ommune, viz., that "the working class cannot simply lay hold of
the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes." (See The Civil War in France; Address of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association, London, Trulove, 1 871, p. 15, where this point is further developed.)2 Further, it is self-evident that the criticism of socialist literature is deficient in relation t o the present time, because it comes down only to 1 847; a lso, that the remarks on t h e relation of t h e Comm unists to the various opposition parties (Section IV), although i n p rinciple still correct, yet in practice are antiquated, because the political situa tion has been entirely changed, and the progress of history has swept from off the earth the greater portion of the political parties there enumerated. B u t, then, the Manifesto has become a historical document which we have n o longer any right to ·alter. A subsequent edition m ay perhaps appear with an introduction bridging the gap from
p
1847 to the present day; this reprint was too unex ected to leave us time for tha t. London, June 24, 1872
Karl Marx
2. See Engels' comment, p. 627, below. [R. T.]
Friedrich Engels
Manifesto of the Communist Party
471
Preface to the Russian Edition of 1882 The first Russian edition of the Manifesto of the. Communist ' Party, translat ed by Bakunin, was published early in the s ixties3 by the printing office of the Kolokol. Then the 'West could see i n it ( th e Russian edition o f the Manifesto) only a literary curiosity . Such a view w o u l d be impossible today. .
What a limited field the proletarian movement still occupied at th a t time (December 1847) is most clearly show n by the last sec tion of the Manifesto: the position of the Communists in relation to the various opposition parties in the various countries. Precisely Russia and the U n i ted States are missing h ere. It was the time when Russia constituted the last great reserve of all European reac tion, when the United States absorbed the surplu s proletarian forces of Europe through immigration . Both countries provided Europe w ith raw materials and were at the same time markets for the s ale of its industrial products. At th at time both were, therefore, i n one
way or another, pillars of the existin g European order.
How very different today! Precisely E u ropean immigration fitted North America for a gigantic agricultural production, whose com petition is shaking the very foundations of European landed proper ty-large and small . I n a d dition it enabled the United States to exploit its tremendous industrial resources with an energy a n d on a scale that must shortly break the industrial monopoly of Western Europe, and especially of England, existing up to now. Both cir cumstances react in revolutionary manner upon America itself. Step by step the small and middle landownership of the farmers, the basis. of the wh ole political constitution, is succUll}bing to the competition of giant farms; s i multaneously, a mass proletariat and a fabulous concentration of capitals are developing for the first time in the ind ustrial regions . And now Russia! During the Revolution of 1848-49 not ollly th� European princes, but the European bourgeois as well, fou n d their only salvatio n from the proletariat, just beginning to awaken, i n Russian intervention . T h e tsar w a s proclaimed t h e chief .of Euro pean reaction. Today he is a prisoner of war of., the revolution, in Gatchina, and Russia forms the vanguard of revolutionary action i n Europe. The Comm unist Manifesto had as its object the proclamation of th e inevitably imp ending dissol ution of modern bourgeois property. B u t in Russia we fi n d , face to face with the rapidly developing capi talist swindle and bourgeois landed· property, just beginning to 3.
The date is not correct; the edition referred to appeared in
1869,
472
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
�
develop, more than h al f he land owned i � Common by the peas . a n t s . Now the question IS: Can the RUSSIan obshchina,4 though . greatly undermI�ed, yet a form of the primeval common ownership . of land, pass dIrectly to the h Igher form of communist common
ownership? r, on the contrar�, must it first pas s through the same . process of dIssolution as constitutes the historical evolution of the West? The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the \Vest, so that bo h complement each other, the present Russian common ownershIp of land may serve as the starting - point for a
�
communist development. London, January 21, 1882
Karl Marx
Friedrich Engels
Preface to the German Edition of 1883 The preface t o the present edition I must, alas, sign alone. M arx, the man to whom the whole working class of Europe and America owes more than to anyone else, rests at H ighgate Cemetery and over h is grave t h e first grass is already g rowing. Since his death,
there can be even less thought of revising or supplemen ting the Manifesto. All the more d o I consider it necessary again to state here the following expressly: The basic thought running through the M anifesto-tha t eco nomic production and the structure of society of every historical epoch necessarily arising therefrom constitute the foundation for
the political and intellectual history of tha t epoch; that conse quently (ever since the dissolution of the primeval commun al owner ship of land) all history has been a history of class s truggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated a n d dominating classes at various stages o f social development; that this struggle, however, has now reached a stage where the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can n o longer emancipate itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it (th e bourgeoisie), without at the same time forever freeing the whole of s ociety from exploitation, oppression and class struggles-thi s basic thought belongs solely and exclusively to M arx .
I have already stated t his many times; but precisely now it is
necessary t hat it also s ta n d i n front of the Manifesto itself. London, June 28, 1883 4.
Village community.
Friedrich Engels
Manifesto of the Communist Party
473
MANIFESTO OF THE COl\11\1UNIST PARTY A spectre is hau nting Europe the spectre of Communis m . All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exor -
cise this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies . . \Vhere is the party in op position that has not been decried a s Communistic by i t s opponents in power? Where the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opp osition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries? Two things result from this fact I . Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powers to be i tself a Power. .
I I . I t is high time that Communists should o p enly in the face of ,
t h e whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.
To this end , Communists of various nationa l it i es have assembled in London, and sketched the following Manifesto, to b e publ i shed in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish lan guages.
1. Bourgeois and Proletarians5 The history of all hitherto existing society6 is the history of class struggles . Freeman
and
slave,
patrician
5. By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern Capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employ ers of wage-labour. By proletariat, the class of modern wage-labourers who, ha vin no means of production of their own, are reduced t9 selling their la bour-power in order to live. [Engels,
g
English edition of 1888)
6.
That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social. or ganisation existing previous to recorded history, was all but unknown. Since then, Haxthausen discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Maurer proved it to be the social foundation irom which all Teutonic races started in history, and by and by village com munities were found to be, or to have
and
p lebeian, · lord
and
serf,
been the primitive form of society· everywhere from India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this pri i ive Communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Morgan's crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of these primaeval com munities society begins to be differen tiated into separate and finally antag onistic classes. I .have attempted to retrace this proc e ss of dissolution in: "Der Ursprung der Familie, de·s Privat eigenthums und des Staats" [The Ori
in t
gin of the Family, Private Property and the State], 2nd edition, Stuttgart 1886. [Engels, English edition of 1888]
474
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
guild-master7 and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninter rupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classe s . In t h e earlier epochs of history, w e find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank.
In ancient Rome we have patricians,
knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals , guild-masters, journeymen, a pprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations. The modern bou rgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with clash antagonis m s . It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones . Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms: Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great host ile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: B o u rgeoisie and Proletariat. From the serfs o f the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed . The discovery o f America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie . The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colo nies, the increase in the m eans of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to com merce, to navigation, to industry, an i mpulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolution ary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development . The feudal system o f industry, under which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer s u fficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the m a n u facturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each
single workshop . Meantime the
markets kept ever growing, the demand ever risi ng . Even manufacture no longer suffi ced. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial producti o n . The place of manu facture was taken by the gia n t , Modern Industry, the place of the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the lead ers of
whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois. 7. Guild-master, that is, a full member of a guild, a master within, not a head
of a guild. [Engels, English edition of 1888]
Manifesto of the Communist Party
475
Modern industry has established the world-market, 'for which the discovery of America paved the way . T h i s market has given a n immense development to commerce, t o navigation, to communica tion by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoi sie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages . We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the prod uct of a long course of development, o f a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange . Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompa nied by a corresponding political advance o f that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the mediaeval commune;8 here inde pendent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany) , there taxable "third estate" of the monarchy (as in France) , afterwards, in the period of manufacture proper, serving either the semi-feudal o r the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, corner-stone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoi sie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world-market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political swa y . The executive o f t h e modern S tate is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisi e, historically, has played a most revolutionary part. The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper h a n d , has put an end to a l l feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relation s . It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley 'feudal ties that bound man to his "natural supe riors," and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man t h a n naked self-interest, t h a n callous "cash paymen t . " It h a s drowned the most heavenly ecstasies o f religious fervour, o f chival
rous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation . It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, ahd in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered free doms, has set u p that single, unconscionable freedom-Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illu sions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. 8. "Commune" was the name taken, in France, by the nascent towns even be fore they had conquered from their feudal lords and masters local self government and political rights as the "Third Estate." Generally speaking, for the economical development of the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country; for its political
development,
France.
[Engels, English
edition 0/ 1888] This was the name given their urban communities by the townsmen of Italy and France, after they had purchased or wrested their initial rights of self government from their feudal lords.
[Engels, German edition 0/ 1890]
476
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
The bourgeoisie has stripp ed of its halo every occupation hitherto hon oured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converte d the ph y sician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, a n d has reduced the family re latio n to a mere m o ney re la t ion .
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal
display of vigo u r in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists so m uch
a d mire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indo lence. It ha s been the first to show what man's a c t i vity c a n bring about. It has acco m plishe d wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyra
mids, Roman aqueducts, and Got h i c cathedrals; it has conducted
expeditio n s that put in t h e shade all former Exoduses of nations a n d crusades. The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly re vo lu tionisin g the in st ru men t s of pr od ucti o n and th ereby t he r elati ons o f p ro duc ,
tion, and with the m the wh ol e relations of society. Con s e r v a tion of
t he old modes of production in unaltered form, w a s, on the contrary,
the first condition of existence for al l earlier industrial classes. Con
stant r e vo lutio nising of produ«tion, uninterrupted disturbance of all
social conditions, ev erl astin g uncertain ty and agitatio n d i st i n gu i sh the b our g eois e poch from all earlier on e s. All fixed, fast-frozen rela tions, with t heir train of a ncient and venerable prej ud ices and o p i n
ions, are swept away, all new - formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, a l l that is
h ol y is pro faned, and man is at last compelled to face w i th sober senses, his
real co n ditions of life, and his relations with his kin d.
The need o f a constantly e x panding market for its products chases
th e bo urg eoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It m ust nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.
The bo ur g eois i e has through its exp loita tio n of the worl d m arket -
given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in
every country. To the great chagr in of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of in du stry the national ground on which it stood. All old e sta blished n ational i ndustries have been d est r o yed or -
are daily being destroyed. They are disl od g ed by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death q uest i on for all civi
lised nations, by industries that n o longer work up in dig en ous ra w m a terial b ut raw material drawn from the r emote st zones; indus ,
tries whose products are consumed, n ot only at home, but in every
qua rter of the globe In p l ace of the old wants, satisfied by the pro .
ductions of the country, we find new wants, req ui r ing for their satis faction the p r od ucts of distant lands a nd climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self suffi c i ency we have intercourse -
,
in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in materia l, so also in i n te l lect ual production. The intellectual creations
Manifesto of the Communist Party
477
of individual nations become common property. National one-sided ness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of
production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all C hinese walls, with
which it forces the barbarians'
intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to cap i tulate It compels all .
nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of pro duction; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into
i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it
their midst,
creates a world after its own image. The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the
populat"ion from the idiocy of rural life.
Just as it has made the country dependent on the to\vns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civ ilised ones, nations of peasants on na�ions of bourgeois, the East on the \Vest. The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scat tered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property It has agglomerated population, centralised means of pro .
duction, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The neces
·sary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier and one customs tari ff -
.
The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has
created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have
all precedi n g generations together. S ub j ect ion of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agri c ul
ture
,
steam nav igation, -
rail ways,
electric
telegraphs
,
clearing of
whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole popu lations conjured out of the ground-what earlier century h ad even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?
\Ve see then: the means of p r od u c tion and of exchange, on
whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a ce r tain stage in the devel o p ment
of these means
of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agricul hue and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations
478
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
of property beca m e no longer compati ble with the already devel o pe d productive forces; they became so many fetters. They h a d to be burst asunder; they were burst asunde r. Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitu tion adapted to it, and by the economi cal and political sway of the bourgeois class . A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society with its relations of productio n, of exchange and of proper ty, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells . For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of m o dern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the prop erty relations that are t h e conditions for the existence of the bour g eoisie and of i ts rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society. In t hese crises a great p art not only of the existing products, b u t also of the
previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks o u t an epidemic t hat, in all earlier epochs, would have seem e d an absurdity-the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary bar.
barism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had c u t off t h e supply of every means of subsistence; industry and com merce seem to be destroyed; and why? B ecause there is too much civilisa tion, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too
m uch commerce. The productive forces at the d isposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bour geois property; on t h e contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder i n to the whole ofbour
geois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The con ditions of b o urgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one h and by enforced destruction of a mass of pro ductive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new m a rkets, and by the m o re thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented. The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground a re now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.
B ut not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring d eath to i ts elf; it has also called into existence the men who a re to wield those weapons-the modern working class-the proletarians. In p roportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the
Manifesto of the Communist Party
479
s a m e proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, devel oped-a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital . These labourers, who must sell themselves piece-meal, are a com modity, like every other article o f commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations o f the market. Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of l ab o u r, t h e work of t h e proletarians h a s l o s t all individual character, a n d consequently, a l l charm f o r t h e workman. H e becomes a n appen dage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monoto nous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of h i m . Hence, t h e cost o f production of a workman i s restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for h is mainte n a n ce, and for the propagation of his race . But the price of a com modity, and therefore also o f l abour,9 is equal to its cost of produc tion . I n proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, i n the same proportion the b urden o f toil also increases, whether b y prolongation of the working hours, by increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of the machinery, etc. l\Iodern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriar chal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses c
of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers . As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command o f a perfect hierarchy of officers a n d sergeants . Not only are they slaves o f the bou rgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machi n e, by the over-looker, and, above all, b y the individual bourgeois manu facturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering i t is. The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in o t h er words, the more modern industry becomes devel.; oped, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of wome n . Differences o f age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class . All are instruments of labour, mOre or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex. No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufac t urer, so far, a t an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkee per, the pawnbroker, etc . T h e lower strata of t h e middle class-the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen 9.
Subseque n t l y labour p o w e r .
Marx
p o i n t e d out t h a t t h e w o r k e r s e l l s n o t his l a b o u r b u t h i s
4 80
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
and peasants-all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly b ecause their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and i s swamped in the com petition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of prod uction . Thus the proletariat is recruited from all c lasses of the population . The proletariat goes through various stages of developmen t . With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeois i e . At first the contest i s carried o n by individual labourers, then by the work people of a factory, then by the operatives of one trade, in one locality, against t h e individual bourgeois who directly expl oits them. They direct t h eir attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, b u t against t h e instruments of production themselves; t h e y destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories a blaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the l\Iiddle Ages. A t this stage the labourers stilI form a n incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competi tion . If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not y e t the consequence of their o w n active union, b u t of t h e union of the bourgeoisie, which class, i n order to attain its own poli tical ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of a bsolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-ind ustrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie. Thus t he whole his torical movement i s concentrated i n the h ands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie. But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in n u m ber; i t becomes concentrated i n greater masses, i ts strength grows, a n d i t feels that strength more . The various in terests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised , in proportion as machinery obliterates all d is tinctions of l abour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and
I
i,
\
I
Iii
�.ii�i,
j
t h e resulting commercial c rises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctua ting. The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more pre carious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the c haracter of collisions be tween two classes . Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations ( Trades Union s ) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there the contest breaks out into riots.
Manifesto of the Communist Party
48 1
Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a t im e . The real fruit of their battles lies, not i n the immediate result, b u t i n the ever-expanding u n i o n o f t h e workers. This u n i o n i s helped o n by the improved means o f communication t h a t a r e created b y modern industry a n d that place t h e workers o f different localities i n contact with o n e another. I t w a s j u s t this contact that w a s needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes . But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers o f t h e M i d d l e Ages, w i t h t h e i r miserable highways, required centuries , the m odern p roletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years . This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and conse quently i n to a political party, i s continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. B u t it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recogni tion o f particular interests o f the workers, by taking advantage of the d ivisions among the bourgeoisie itsel f . Thus the ten-h ours' bill in England was carried. Altogether collisions between the classes o f the old society further,
in many ways, the course of d evelopment of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battl e . A t first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of th e bourgeoisie itself, whose in terests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; a t all times, with the bourgeoisie o f foreign countries . I n a l l these battles i t sees itself compelled to appeal to t h e proletariat,
to ask for its help, and thus, to drag i t into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own ele ments of political and general education, in other words, it fur nishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie . . Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling classes are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the prole tariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence . These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlighten ment and progres s . Finally, i n times when t h e class struggle nears the decisive hour, the p rocess o f dissolution going o n within the ruling class , in fact within the whole range o f society, assumes such a v iolent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, a n d joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. J us t as, therefore, a t an ear l ier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so n o w a portion of the bour geoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole. O f all the classes that stand face t o face with the bourgeoisie
482
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern I n d ustry; the proletariat is its special and essential product. The l o w e r middle class, the s m a l l manufacturer, the sh opkeeper, t h e artisan, the peasant, all t hese fight again st the b o u rgeoisie , to save from extinction their existence a s fractions o f t h e m i d dle class. They a r e therefore n o t revolutionary, b ut conservative . Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel o f h i story . I f
by chance they are revolutionary, they are s o only
in view of their
i m pending transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their present , b u t their f u t u r e interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.
The "dangerous cla s s , " the social scum, that passi vely rotting mass thrown off b y the lowest layers o f old society, may, here and there, b e swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions o f life, however, prepare i t far more for t h e part o f a b ribed tool of reactionary intrigue . In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped . The proletarian i s without property; his relation t o his wife and children h as no longer anything in common
with
the
bourgeois
family-relations;
modern
industr ial
labour, modern subj ection to capital, the s a m e in England as in France, in America as in Germany, h a s stripped him of every trace o f national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him s o m anv bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush j ust as many bourgeois interests . All the preceding classes that got the u p p er h a n d , sought to for tify their already acquired status by subj ecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode o f appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation . They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission i s t o destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property. All previous historical movements were movements o f m i n orities, o r in the interests of minorities . The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement o f the immense m a j ority, in the interests of the immense m a j ority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself u p , without t h e w h o l e superincumbent strata o f o ffi c i a l society being sprung into the a i r. Though n o t in substance, yet in f o r m , the struggle of t h e prole tariat with the bourgeoisie i s a t first a national struggl e . The p role tariat o f each country m ust, of course, first o f all settle matters with i t s own b ourgeois i e .
I n depicting the m o s t general p h a s e s o f the development o f .th e
Manifesto of the Communist Party
483
proletariat, we traced the more o r less veiled civil war, raging within
existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into
open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie
lays the foundation for the sway o f the proletariat. Hitherto,
every
form
of society has
.
been based, as we have
already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes . But
in order to oppress a class, certain conditions m ust be assured
to- it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The
serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to mem bership in the commune, j ust as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to develop
into
a bourgeois. The m odern
la bourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of
in d ustry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence
of his own cla ss. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops
more rapidly than population a n d wealth . And here i t becomes evi
dent, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as
an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent t o
assure a n existence to i t s slave within h i s slavery, because i t cannot
help letting him sink into such a state , that i t has to feed him,
instead of being fed by him. Society can n o longer live under this
bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible
with societ v .
T h e ess�ntial condition f o r the existence, and for t h e sway o f the
bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the
condition for capital is wage-labo u r . Wage-labour rests exclusively
on competition between the labourers . The advance of industry,
whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation
of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combi nation, due to asso ciation. The development of Modern Industry,
therefore, cuts from under its feet the very -foundation on which the
h ourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. \Vhat the bourgeoi sie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
I I . Proletarians and Communists In what relation do the Communists s tand to the proletarians as
a whole?
The Comm unists d o not form a separate party opposed to other
working-class parties .
They have no interests ·separate and apart from those of the pro�
letariat as a whole.
They d o not set up any sectarian principles o f their own, by which
to shape and mould the proletarian movement.
The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class
484
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
parties by this only : ( 1 ) In the national struggles of the proletari ans o f the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently o f all nati onality. ( 2 ) I n the various stages of development which the
struggle of the working class against the bourgoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whol e . T h e Communists, therefore, are o n . the one hand, practically, the
most advanced and resolute section o f the working-class parties o f every country, t h a t section which pushes forward a l l others; o n the other h and, theoretically, they have over th e great masS of the prole tariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of marc h , the conditions, and the ultimate general results o f the proletarian move ment . The immediate aim o f the Communists i s the same a s that of all the other proletarian parties : formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat. The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in n o way based on ideas or principles that h av e been invented, or discovered, hy this or that would-be universal reformer . They merely express, i n general terms, actual relations springing from a n existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on nnder our very eye s. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of Communis m . All property relations i n the p a s t have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical condi tions . The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property i n favour o f bourgeois property. The distinguishing feature o f Communism is not the abolition o f property generally, but the abolition o f bourgeois property. B u t modern bourgeois private property i s t h e fi n a l a n d m o s t complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that i s based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation o f the many
hy the fe w. In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence : Abolition of private property.
'iV e Communists have been reproached with the desire o f abol
ishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man ' s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork o f all personal freedom, activity and independence . Hard-won, self-acq'u ired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of the petty artisan a n d of the small peasant,
a
form of
Manifesto of the Communist Party
485
property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of i ndustry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily. Or do you mean modern bourgeois private property? B ut does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a b i t . It creates capital, i . e . , that kind of property which exploits
wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition o f begetting a new supply o f wage-labour for ·fresh exploitatio n . Prop erty, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital a n d wage-labour. L e t us e x a mine b o t h s i d e s of t h i s antagonism. To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a
social status in production . Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, i n the last resort, only by th e united action of all members of society, can i t be set in
motio n . Capital i s , therefore, n ot a personal, i t i s a social power. When, therefore, capital i s converted into common property, into the property of all members o f society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. I t is only the social charac ter of the property that is changed. It loses its class-character. Let us now take wage-labour .
The average p r i c e of wage-labour is t h e minimum wage, i . e . , tha t quantum of the means of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer i n bare existence as a labourer. \Vhat, there fore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means o f his labour, merely s uffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means ihtend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of l abour, an appropriation that is m a d e f o r t h e maintenance and reproduction o f h u m a n life, and t h a t leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with, i s the miserable character o f t h i s appropriation, u n d e r which the labourer l ives merely to increase capital, and i s allowed t o live only in s o far as the interest of the ruling class requires i t . In bourgeois society, living l a b o u r i s b u t a m e a n s t o increase
accu"
mulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour i s but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer. In bourgeois s ociety, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past . I n bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has n o individuality. And the abolition of this state of things i s called by the bour
geois, abolition of i ndividuality and freedom ! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, a n d bourgeois freedom i s undoubtedly a i m e d at.
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
486
By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of prod uction, free trade, free selling a n d buying
.
B u t if sel ling and buying disappears, free selling a n d buying dis .
appears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other "brave words " of our bourgeoisie about freedom in general, have a mean ing, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying
and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itsel f. You are horrified at our intending to do away with private prop
erty. But in your existing society, private pro p erty is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the
-
few is solely due to its non existence in the hands of those n ine tenths . You reproach us, therefore, with i ntending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense ma jority of society
.
In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is j u s t what we intend . From the moment when labour can n o longer b e converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capa ble of being monop olised, i.e., from t h e moment when individual property can no longe r be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital , from t h a t moment, you say, individuality v a nishe s
.
You m ust, therefore, confess that by "individual
"
you mean no
other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-cl ass owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossibl e. Comm u n ism deprives n o m a n of t h e power to appropriate the products of society ; all that it does i� to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation . It has been objected that upon the abolition of pri\l ate property '
all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake u s . According t o this, bourgeois society ought long ago t o have gone to the dog s through sh eer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expres s ion of the
l ( Communistic mode of produ,# ng
tautology : that there can no longer be any wage-labour when ther is no longer any capital. All objections urged against the
and appropriating material products, have, i n t h e same way, been urged against the Communistic modes of producing and appropriat ing intellectual products
.
Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappear.
Manifesto of the Communist Party
487
a n c e of class property is the disa ppearance o f production itself, so the disappearance o f class culture i s t o him identical with t h e disap pearance o f all culture . That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous majority, a mere training to act a s a machin e . B u t d o n ' t wrangle with u s so long as y o u apply, to our intended a bolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions o f freedom, culture, law, &c. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of th e conditions of your bourgeois production and bour geois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your clas s m a d e into a l a w for a l l , a will, w h o s e essential character and direc
tion a re determined bv - the economical conditions of existence of vour clas s . The selfish misconception that induces you t o transform into eternal laws o f nature and o f reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form o f property-historical
relations that rise and disappear in the progress o f production-this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you . \\ nat you see clearly i n the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case o f feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case o f your own bourgeois form of property. A bolition o f the family! Even the most radical flare up at this in famous proposal of the Communists. O n what foundation is t h e present family, t h e bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gai n . In its completely developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this . state o f things finds i t s complement i n the practical absence o f the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution . The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital . Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of chil dren by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty. But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social . And your educatio n ! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the i_n tervention, direct o r indirect, o f society, by means o f schools, &c. ? The Com munists have not invented the intervention o f society in education; they d o but seek to· alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class . The bourgeois clap-trap about the family a n d education, about the hallowed co-relation of parent a n d child, becomes all the more
disgustin g , the more, by the action o f Modern Industry, all family
488
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their c h i l d ren transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments o f labour. But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the whole bourgeoisie in choru s . The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument o f production . He hears that the i nstruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than that the l o t o f being common to all will likewise fall to the women. H e h a s not even a suspicion tha t the real poi n t aimed at is to d o away w i t h the s tatus of w o m e n as m e r e i nstruments of production . For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indig nation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and o fficially established by the Commu n ists . The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial . Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of their proletarians a t their disposal, not to speak of common pros titutes, take the greatest pleasure i n seducing each other's wives . B o u rgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common and th us, a t the most, what the C ommunists might possibly be re proached with, is that they desire to i ntroduce, in subst i tution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of wome n . For the rest, it is self-evident that the abol ition o f t h e present sys tem of production must bring with it the abolition of the commu nity of women springing from that system, i . e . , of prosti tution both public and private. The Communists are further abolish countries and nationality.
reproached
with
desiring
to
The working men have no country. W e cannot take from them what they have not got . Since the proletariat must first of all ac� quire political supremacy, must rise to b e the leading class o f the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is, s o far, i tself national, though not i n the bourgeois sense of the word. National di fferences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bour geoisie, t o freedom o f commerce, to the world-market, to uniformity i n the mode o f production and i n the conditions of life correspond-
/I 71
ing thereto. The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish till faster. United action, of the .leading civilised countries at 1 st , i s one of t h e fi r s t conditions f o r t h e emancipation o f t h e proletanat . In proportion as the exploitation of one i ndividual by another i s put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. I n proportion as the antagonism between
Manifesto of the Communist Party
489
classes within t h e nation vanishes, t h e hostility o f o n e nation to a n other will come to an e n d . T h e charges aga i n s t Communism made from a religious, a philo sophical, and, generally, from a n ideological standpoint, are not de serving of serious examination . Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that m a n ' s ideas, views and conceptions , in one word, man's consciousn ess, changes with every ch:mge in the conditions o f his material existence, in his social relations and i n h i s social life? What else does the history o f ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material produc tion i s changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas o f its ruling cla s s . When people speak o f ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express the fact, that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of exist ence. \Vhen the ancient world was i n its last throes, the ancient reli gions were overcome by Christianity. \Vhen Christian ideas suc cumbed i n the 1 8 th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeo i s i e . The ideas o f religious l i berty and freedom of conscience merely gave ex pression to the sway o f free competition within the domain of knowl edge . "Undoubtedly, " it will be s a i d , "religious, moral, philosophical and j u ridical ideas have been mo dified in the course of historical de velopment. But religion, morality, phi losophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this chang e . " "There a r e , besides, eternal truths, such a s Freedom, J ustice, etc . , that a r e common t o a l l states of society. B u t Communism abolishes eternal truths, i t abolishes all religion, and all morality, i n stead of constituting them on a new basis; i t therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience . "
What does this accusation reduce itself t o ? The history o f all
past society has consisted in the development of class antagoni sms, antagon isms that assumed d i fferent forms at different epochs . B ut whatever form they m a y have taken, o n e fact i s common t o
all p a s t ages, viz ., t h e exploitation o f o n e part o f society by the
other. No _wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past . ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety i t displays, moves within cer tain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely van ish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms . The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with tradi tional property relations; n o wonder that its developm ent involves
490
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
the most radical rupture with traditional ideas. B u t let us have done with the bourgeois ob jections to Commu nIsm . We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle o f democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by de grees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments o f prod u ction in the hands of the State,
i.e., o f the proletariat or
ganised as the ruling class; and to increase the tota l o f productive forces a s rapidly a s possible. O f course, in t h e beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, a n d on the con ditions o f bourgeois producti on; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient a n d untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely rev olutionising the mode of production . These measures will of course be different in different countries. Nevertheless in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable. 1.
Abolition o f property in l a n d and application o f all rents of
land to public purposes . 2.
A heavy progressive or graduated income t a x .
3 . Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants a n d rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of
a national bank with State capital a n d an exclusive m on opoly.
6. Centralisation o f the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State .
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by
the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, a n d the im provement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial ar mies, especially for agriculture . 9.
Combination
of agriculture
with manufacturing ind ustries;
gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country. 10. Free education for all children in public sch � ol s . Aboliti . . . children's factory labour m ItS present form. Combma tio n of e tion with ind ustrial production, & c . , &c .
��JDf ( ca-
J When, in the course of development, class distinctions have d is appeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power-will lose its
political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletar-
Manifesto of the Communist Party
491
iat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revo lution, i t makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abol ished its own supremacy as a class . In place of the o l d bourgeois society, with its classes a n d class an tagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free develop ment of each is the condition for the free development of all.
III. Socialist and Communist Literature 1.
REACTIONARY SOCIALISM A. Feudal Socialism
Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of the aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against modern bourgeois society. In the French revolution of July 1830, and in the English rdorm agitation, these aristocracies again suc cum bed to the hateful upstart. Thenceforth, a serious political con test was altogether out of the question. A literary battle alone re mained possible. But even in the domain of literature the old cries of the restoration periodl had become impossible. In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy were obliged to lose sight, apparently, of their own interests, and to formulate their in dictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus the aristocracy took their revenge by sing ing lampoons on their new master, and whispering in his ears sinis ter prophecies of coming catastrophe. In this wav arose Feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half lam poon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart's core; but always ludricrous in its effect, through total in capacity to comprehend the march of modern history. The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter. One section of the French Legitimists2 and "Young England"3 exhibited this spectacle. 1. Not the English Restoration 1660 to 1689, but the French Restoration 1814 1830. [Engels, English edition of
to
1888]
2.
T h e party of t h e noble landown ers, who advocated the restoration of the
Bourbon dynasty. A group of British Conservatives aristocrats and men of politics and literature-formed about 1842. Prom inent among them were Disraeli, Thom as Carlyle, and others. 3.
492
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to
that of the bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they exploited unaer circumstances and conditions that were quite different, and
that are now antiquated. In showing that, under their rule, th e modern proletariat never existed, they forget that the modern bour geoisie is the necessary offspring of their own fonn of society.
For the rest, so little do they concea l the reactionarv character of their criticism that their chief accusation against t he bourgeoisie amounts to this, that under the bourgeois regime a class is being de veloped, which is destined to cut up root and branch the old order of society.
What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it creates a proletariat, as that it creates a revolutionary proletariat.
In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive measures against the working class; and in ordinary life, despite their high fa
lutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped from
the tree of industry, and to barter truth, love, and honour for traffic in woo l , beetroot-sugar, and potato spirits.4
As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so
has Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism.
Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist
tinge . Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the State? Has it not preached in the place
of these, charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and Mother Church? Christian Socialism is but the
holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of
the aristocrat.
B. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of existence pined and perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society.
The mediaeval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the
precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little developed, industrially and commercially, these two classes still vegetate side by side with the rising bourgeoisie. In countries where modern civilisation has become fully devel
oped, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating e]f as a
�
between proletariat and bourgeoisie and ever rene'Wi 4. This applies chiefly to Germany where the landed aristocracy and squirearchy have large portions of their estates cultivated for their own account by stewards, and are, moreover, extensive beetroot-sugar manufacturers and distillers of potato spirits. The wealth-
ier British aristocracy are, as yrt, rather above that: but they, too, know how to make up for declining rents b}' lending their names to floaters of more or less shady joint-stock companies.
[Engels, English edition of 1888]
Manifesto of the Communist Party
493
supplementary part of bourgeois society. The individual members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the prole
tariat by the action of competition, and, as modern industry devel
ops, they even see the moment approaching when they will com
pletely disappear as an independent section of modern society, to be
replaced, in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by overlook ers, bailiffs and shopmen.
.In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more
tha n half of the population, it was natural that writers who sided
with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, should use, in their crit icism of the bourgeois regime, the standard of the peasant and
petty bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intermediate
classes should take up the cudgels for the working class. Thus arose petty-bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi was the head of this school, not
only in France b ut also in Englancl . This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the con
tradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the
hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the
disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the concen
tration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and
peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.
In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either
to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping
the modern means of production and of exchange, within the
framework of the old property relations that have been, and were
bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian. Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture, patriarchal relations in agriculture.
Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intox icating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a
miserable fit of the blues.
C. German, or "True," Socialism The Socialist and Communist literatme of France, a literature
that originated under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and that was the expression of the struggle against this power, was intro
duced into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie, in that coun
try, had just begun its contest with feudal absolutism.
494
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
German philosophers, would-be philosophers , and beaux esprits, eagerly seized on this literature, only forgetting, th a t when these writings immigrated from France into Germany, French social con d itions had not immigrated along with them . In contact with German social conditions, this French l iterature l ost all its immedi ate practical significance, a n d ass umed a purely literary aspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of the eighteenth century, the demands of the first French Revolution were nothing more than the demands of "Practical Reason" in general, a n d the utterance of the
of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie signified in their eyes
will
the law of pure Will, of \Vill as it was b o u n d to be, of true human Will general ly. The work of the German literati consiste.d solely i n bringing the new French ideas into harmony with their ancient philosophical conscience, or rather, in annexing the French ideas without desert ing their own philosophic point of view. This annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign language is appropriated, namely, by translatio n . It is well known how the monks wrote silly l ives o f Catholic Saints over the manuscripts on which the cl assical works· of ancient heathendom had been written. The German literati reversed this process with the profane French literature. They wrote their philo sophical
nonsense
beneath
the
French
original .
For
instance,
beneath the French criticism of the economic functions of money, they wrote "Alienation o f Humanity , " and beneath the French crit icism of the bou rgeois State they wrote "dethronement of the Cate gory of the General," and so forth . The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of the
French
historical
criticisms
they
dubbed
"Philosophy
of
Action," "True Socialis m , " "German Science of Socialism ," "Phil osophical Foundation of Socialis m , " a n d so o n . The French Socialist a n d Commu nist literature w a s t h u s com pletely emasculated . And, since it ceased in the hands of the Ger " m a n to express the struggle ot o ne class with the other, he felt conscious of having overcome "French one-sidedness" and of repre senting, not true requirements, but the requirements of truth; not the interests of the proletariat, but the interests o f Human Nature, of Man in general , who belongs to no class, has no reality, who exists only in the misty realm of philosophical fantasy. This German Social ism, which took its schoolb� task so seriously and solemnly, a n d extolled its poor stock-in-trade i�h mounte bank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic innocence .
The fight of the Germ an, and especially, of the Pruss ian bourgeoi sie, against feudal aristocracy and
absolute monarchy, in other
words, the liberal movement, became more earnest.
Manifesto of the Communist Party
495
By this, the long wished-for opportunity was offered to "True" Socialism of confronting the political movement with the Socialist demands, of hurling the traditional anathemas against liberalism, against representative government, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois lib erty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this bourgeois move ment. German Socialism forgot, in the nick of time, that the French criticism, whose silly echo it was, presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its corresponding econ omic con ditions o f existence, and the political constitution adapted thereto, the very things whose attainment was the object of the pending struggle in Germany. To the absolute governments, with their following of parsons, professors, country squires and officials, it served as a w.elcome scare-, crow against the threatening bourgeoisie. It was a sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings and bullets with which these same governments, just at that time, dosed the German working-class risings. \Vhile this "True" Socialism thus served the governments as a weapon for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, directly represented a reactionary interest, the interest of the German Philistines. In Germany the petty-bourgeois class, a relic of the sixteenth century, and since then constantly cropping up again under various forms, is the real social basis of the existing state of thing s . T o presen'e this class i s t o preserve t h e existing state of things i n Germany. The industrial and political supremacy o f the bourgeoisie threatens it with certain destruction; on the one hand, from the con centration of capital; on the other, from the rise of a revolutionary proletariat. "True" Socialism appeared to kill these two birds with one stone. It spread like an epidemic. The robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric, steeped in th� dew of sickly sentiment, this transcendental robe in which the German Socialists wrapped their sorry "eternal truths," all skin and bone, served t o wonderfully increase the sale of their goods amongst such a public. And on its part, German Socialism recognised, more and more, its own calling as the bombastic representative of the petty-bour geois Philistine . It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the German petty Philistine to be the typical man . To every villain ous meanness of this model man it gave a h idden , higher, Socialistic interpretation, the exact contrary of its real character. It went to the extreme length of directly opposing the "brutally destructive" tend-
496
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
ency of Communism, and of proclaiming its supreme and impartial
contempt of all class struggles. \Vith very few exceptions, all the
so-called Socialist and Communist publications that now ( 1847) circulate in Germany belong to the domain of this foul and enervat ing literature.5 2.
CONSERVATIVE, OR BO URGEOIS, SOCIALISM
A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social griev
ances, in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society. To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitari
ans, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of
charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to ani mals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imagi
nable kind. This form of Socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems.
vVe may site Proudhon's Philosophie de l a Mis ere as an exam
ple of this form.
The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily
resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society minus
its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bour
geoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives
the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or
less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should
remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie. A second and more practical, but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class, by showing that no mere political reform,
but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in eco nomical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, how ever, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be effected only by a revolu
tion, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the
5. The revolutionary storm of 1848 swept away this whole shabby tendency and cured its protagonists of the desire to dabble furt h er in Socialism. The
""
chief repr ntative and classical type of this tena cy is Herr Karl Griin.
[Engels, Germ
edition 0/ 1890]
497
Manifesto of the Communist Party
l essen the relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, . Is govern bourgeo of work, cos t , and simplify the adminis trative ment.
only Bourgeo is Socialism attains adequate expressio n, when, and speech. of figure mere a when, it becomes . . dutIes: Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. ProtectIv e the benefit for the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for seriously only the and of ·the working clas s. This i s the last word meant word of b ourgeois Socialism . . . ls---'f or I t is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeo Is IS a bourgeO class. the benefit of the working .
3.
CRITICAL-UTOPIAN S O CIA LISM AND COMMUNISM
\Ve do not here refer to that literature which, in every great
modern revolution, has always given voice to the demands of the
proletariat, such as the writings of Babeuf and others.
The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends,
mad e in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was
being overthrown, these attempts necessarily failed, owing to the then undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to the absence
of the economic conditions for its e mancipation, conditions that
had yet to be produced, and could be produced by the impending
bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that accompa nied these first movements of the proletariat had necessarily a reac
tionary character. It inculcated universal asceticism and social level ling in its crudest form . The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those of
Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen and others, spring into existence in the
early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle between
proletariat and bourgeoisie (see Section I. Bourgeois and Proletar ians) .
The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms,
as well as th e action of the decomposing elements, in the prevailing form of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to
them the spectacl e of a class without any h istorical initiative or any
independent political movement.
Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace
with the development of industry, the economic situation, as ·they find it, does not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the
emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search after a new
social science, after new social laws, that are to create these condi
tions.
Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive action, his-
498
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
torically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones, and the gradual, spontaneous c lass organisation of the proletariat to the organisation of society speci a lly contri ved by these inventors. F u ture -
history resolves itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the practical carrying out of their s ocial plans
.
In t h e formation of their plans they are conscious of caring chiefly for the interests of th e working class, as being the most suffer
ing class. Only from the point of view of being the most suffering
class does the proletariat exist for them.
The u n dev eloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own s urroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the con dition of every member of society, even that of the most favoured.
Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, without distinc
tion of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people, when once they understand their system, fail to see in it the best possible plan of the best possib l e state of society?
Hence, they reject all politi cal, and espec ially a ll re v olutiona r y , action; they wis h to attain their ends by peacefu l means, and endea\' .
our, by small experiments, necessa ril y doomed to failure, and by
the force of example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel. Such fantastic pictures af future society, painted at
a
time when
the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a fan
tastic conception of its own position correspond with the first
instinctive yearnings of tha t class for a general reconstruction of soci ety
.
But these Socialist and Communist public a tions contain also a critical element. They attack every principle of existing society. Hence they are full of the most valuable materials for the enlighten
ment. of the working class. The practical measures proposed in them
-such as the abolition of the distinction between to wn and coun
try, of the family, of the carrying .on of industries for the account of
private individuals, and of the wage system, the proclamati on of social h a rmony the conversion of the functions of the State into a ,
mere superi ntendenc e of production,
all
these proposals
,.
point
solely to the disappearance of class a n tagonisms which were, at that
time, only just cropping up, and which, in these publications, are
recognised in their earliest, indistinct and undefined forms only These proposals t herefore are of a purely Utopian character. ,
.
,
The si gnificance of Critical U top i an Socialism and Communism bears an inverse relation to historical development. In proportion as -
�t
the modern class struggle develops and akes definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest these fantastic attacks on
it, lose all pra ctical value and all theoreti 1 justification Therefore, although the o riginators of these system' were, in many respects, .
Manifesto of the Communist Party
499
revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed mere reac tionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive historical development of the prole tariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and tha t consistently, to deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms . They still dream of experimental realisation of their social Utopias, of found ing isolated "phalansteres," of establishing "Home Colonies," of setting up a "Little Icaria"o-duodecimo editions of the New Jeru salem-and to realise all these castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois. By degrees they sink into the category o f the reactionary conservative Socialists depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic pedan try, and by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the miracu lous effects of their social science. They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part of the working class; such action, according to them, can only result from blind unbelief in the new Gospel. The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respec tively, oppose the Chartists and the Reformistes.7
IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties Section II has made clear the relations of the Communists to the existing working-class parties, such as the Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America. The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of th at movement. In France the Commu nists ally themselves with the Social-Democrats,8 against the con servatiye and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to 6. Phalanst�res were Socialist colonies on the plan of Charles Fourier; lcada was the name given by Cabet to his Utopia and, later on, to his American Communist colony. [Engels, English edition 0/ 18881
"Home colo n ies" were what Owen called his Communist model societies. Phalansle.res was the name of the public palaces planned by Fourier. [ca ria was the name given to the Utopian land of fancy, whose Communist insti tutions Cabet portrayed. [Engels, Ger man
edition 0/ 1890]
7. This refers to the adherents of the newspaper La Re/orme, which was published in Paris from 1843 to 1850.
8.
The party then represented in Par liament by Ledru-Rollin, in literatu r e by Louis Blanc, in the daily press by the Rejorme . . The name of Social Democracy signified, with these its in ventors, a section of the Democratic or Republican party more or less tinged with Socialism. [ Engels, English edi
lion oj 18881
The party in France which at that time called itself Socialist-Democratic was represented in political life by Ledru-Rollin and in literature by Louis Blanc; thus it differed immeasurably from present-day German Social Democracy. [Engels, German edition 0/
1890]
500
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
take up a critical position in regard to phrases and il1usions trad ition al1y handed down from the great Revolution. In Switzerland they support the Radicals, without losing sight of the fact that this party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of Democratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly of radical bour geois . In Poland they support the party that insists on an agrarian revo lution as the prime condition for nation�l eman cipation, that party which fomented the insurrection of Cracow in 1846. In Germany they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squire archy, a n d the petty bourgeoisie.9 But they never cease, for a single instant, to instil into the work ing class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie a n d proletariat, in order that the German workers may straightway use, as so ma ny weapons against the bour geoisie, the social and political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy, and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germa ny, the fight against the bou rgeoisie itself may immediately begin. The
Communists
turn
their
attention
chiefly
to
Germany,
because that country is on the eve of a bou rgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of Euro pean ci vilisation, a n d with a much more developed proletariat, than that of England was in the seventeenth, and of France in the eight eenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian rev olution. In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time. Finally, they labour everywhere for the union a n d agreement of the democratic parties of all countries. The
Communists
disdain
to
conceal
__
their
views
and
aims.
They openly declare that thcir ends c a n be atta ined only by the forc ible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains . They have a world to win.
WORKING l\IIEN OF ALL 9. Kleinhiirgerei in the German or igi nal. Marx and Engels used this term to
-
) ifOUNTRIES , UNITE!
I
describe the reactionary urban petty bourgeoisie.
elements
of
the
Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League MARX AND ENGELS
In 1848 m o s t of the German workers in the Communist League returned to their homeland, and some played prominent parts in the revolutionary events there. In early 18,50, when the wave of revolution had subsided but hope still existed for a new wave, Marx and Engels wrote this Address and dispatched it with an emissary to Germany for circulation among League members. In it they presented
a
radical political strategy for use in event of
a resurgence of revolution in Germany, a strategy aimed at "making the rev olution permanent." This meant preventing the "petty bourgeois democ racy," which would inevitably lead the initial phase o f a new revolutionary wave, from consolidating its ascendancy and keeping the movement in purely reformist channels. Looking back in 188,5, i n his essay "On the His tory of the Comm unist League," Engels wrote that the Address "is still of interest todaY, because petty-bourgeois democracy is even now the party which m u st certainly be the first to come to power in Germany as the sav ior of society from the communist workers on the occasion of the next Eu ropean upheaval n ow soon due
( the
European revolutions, 1815, 1830,
1848-,52, 1870, have occurred at intervals of fifteen to eighteen years i n
o u r century ) ."
Brothers! In the two revolutionary years 1 8 48-49 the League proved itself in double fashion: first, in that its members energeti cally took part in the' movement in all places, that in the p ress, on the barricades and on the battlefields, they stood in the front ranks of the only decidedly revolutionary class, the proletariat. The League further proved itself in tha t its conception of the movement a s laid down in the circulars of the congresses and of the Central Committee of 1 847 as well a s in the Communist Manifesto turned out to be the only correct one, that the expectations expressed in those documents were completely fulfilled and the conception of
501
502
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
present-day social conditions, previously propagated only in secret by the League, is now on everyone's lips and is openly p reached in the market places. At the same time the former firm organisation of the League was considerably slackened. A large part of the members who directly participated in the revolutionary movement believed the time for secret societies to have gone by a n d public activities alone sufficient. The individual circles and communities allowed their connections with the Central C ommittee to b ecome l o ose and gradually dormant. Consequently, while the democratic party, the party of the petty bourgeoisie, organised itself more and more in Germany, the workers' party lost its only firm foothold, remained organised at the most in separate localities for local purposes and in
the general movement thus came completely under the domination and leadership of the petty-bourgeois democrats . An end must be put to this state of affairs, the independence of the workers must be restored. The Central Committee realised this necessity and there
fore already in the winter of 1848-49 it sent an emissary, Josef Moll,
to Germany for the reorganisation of the League. Moll's mission , however, was without lasting effect, partly because the German workers at tha t time had not acquired sufficient experience and partly because it was i nterrupted by the insurrection of the previous May. Moll himself took up the musket, entered the Baden-Palatin
ate army and fell on July 19 in the encounter at the Murg. The League l ost in him one of its oldest, most active and most trustwor thy members, one who had been active in all the congresses and Central Committees and even prior to this had carried out a series of missions with great success. After the defeat of the revolutionary
parties of Germany and France in July 1849, almost all the mem
bers of the Central Committee came together again in London, replenished their numbers with new revolutionary forces and set about the reorganisation of the League with renewed zeal. Reorganisation can only be carried out by a n emissary, and the Central Committee considers it extremely important that the emis sary should leave precisely at this moment when a new revolution is impending, when the workers' party, therefore, must act in the most organised, most unanimous a n d most independent fashion possible if it is not to be exploited and taken in tow again by the
bourgeoisie as in 1848.
B rothers! We told you as early as 1 848 that the German liberal bourgeois would soon come to power and would immediately turn their newly acquired power again.st the workers. You have seen h ow ac At' was the bourgeois who, immedi
this has been fulfilled. In
�
ately after the March mov
state power and used this
ent of
1848, took possession of the
ower to force back at once the workers,
their allies in the struggle, into their former oppressed position .
Address to the Communist League
503
Though the bourgeoisie was not able to accomplish this without
uniting with the feudal party, which had been disposed o f in March, without final1y even surrendering p o w er once again to this
feudal absolutis t party, still it has secured conditions for itself which, in the long run, owing to the financial embarrassment of the governmen t, would place power in its hands and would safeguard all
its interests, if it were possible for the revolutionary movement to
assume already now a so-called peaceful development. The bourgeoi sie, in order to safeguard its rule, would not even need to make
itself obnoxious by violent measures against the people, since all such viol ent steps have already been taken by the f eudal counter revolution. Developments, however, will not take
this peaceful
course. On th e contrary, the revolution, which will accelerate this
development, is near at hand, whether it will be called forth by an
independent uprising of the French proletariat o r by an invasion of the Holy Alliance against the revolutionary Babylon.!
And the role, this so treacherous role which the German liberal
bourgeois played in 1 848 against the people, will in the impending revolution be taken over by the democratic petty bourgeois, who at
present oc cupy the same position in the opposition as the liberal
bourgeois before 1 848. This party, the democratic party, which is
far more dangerous to the workers than the previous liberal one,
consists of three elements: I. Of the most advanced sections of the big bourgeoisie, which
p u rsue the aim of the immediate complete overthrow of feudalism
and absolutism. This faction is represented by the one-time Berlin
;
compromisers by the tax resisters.
I I . Of the democratic-constitutional petty bourgeois, whose main
aim during the previous movement was the establishment of a more or less democratic federal state as striven for by their representa tives, the Lefts in the Frankfort Assembly, and later by the Stut t
gart parliament, and by themselves in the campaign for the Reich
Constitution.
III. Of the republican petty bourgeois, whose ideal is a German
federative republic after the manner of Switzerland, and who now
call themselves Red and social-democratic because they cherish the pious wish of abolishing the pressure of big capital on small capital, of the big bourgeois on the small bourgeois. The representatives of
this faction were the members of the democratic congresses and committees, the leaders of the democratic associations, the editors of the democratic newspapers.
Now, after their defeat, al1 these factions call themselves Republi
cans or Reds, just as the republican petty bourgeois in France now
1. Revolutio"ary BabylOlz: The reference is to Paris, which ever since the French bourgeois revolution of the end
of the eighteenth century was considered the hotbed of the revolution.
504
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
call themselves Socialists. \Vhere, as in \\'iirttemberg, Bavaria, etc., they still find opportunity to pursue their aims constitutionally,
they seize the occasion to retain their old phrases and to prove by
deeds that they have not changed in the least. It is evident, more
over, that the altered name of this party does not make the slightest
difference in its attitude to the workers, but merely proves that they
are now obliged to turn against the bourgeoisie, which is united
with absolutism, and to seek support in the proletariat. The petty-bourgeois democratic party in Germany is very power ful; it comprises not only the great majority of the bourgeois inhab
itants of the towns, the small people in industry and trade and the guild masters; it numbers among its followers also the peasants and the rural proletariat, in so far as the latter has not yet found a sup
port in the independent urban proletariat. The relation of the revolutionary workers' party to the petty bourgeois democrats is this: it marches together with them against the faction which it aims at overthrowing, it opposes them in every
thing whereby they seek to consolidate their position in their own interests.
Far from desiri.ng to revolutionise all society for the revolutionary proletarians, the democratic petty bourgeois strive for a change in
social conditions by means of which existing society will be made as
tolerable and comfortable as possible for them. Hence they demand
above all diminution of state expenditure by a curtailment of the
bureaucracy and shifting the chief taxes on to the big landowners and bourgeois. Further, they demand the abolition of the pressure of big capital on small, through public credit institutions and laws
against usury, by which means it will be possible for them and the
peasants to obtain advances, on favourable conditions, from the state instead of from the capitalists; they also demand the establish ment of bourgeois property relations in the countryside by the com
plete abolition of feudalism. To accomplish all this they need a democratic state structure, either constitutional or republican, that
will give them and their allies, the peasants, a maj ority; also a dem ocratic communal structure that will give them direct control over communal property and over a series of functions now performed by
the bureaucrats. The domination and speedy increase of capital is further to be counteracted partly by restricting the right of inheritance and partly by transferring as many jobs of work as possible to the state. As far as the workers are concerned-it remains certain above all that they
are to remain wage-work s as before; the democratic petty bour
bette
geois only desire wages and a more secure existence for the workers and hope to achieve this through partial employment by
Address to the Communist League
505
the state and through charity measures; in short, they hope to bribe
the workers by more or less concealed alms and to break their revo lutionary potency by making their position tolerable for the
moment. The demands of the petty-bourgeois democracy here sum marised are not put forward by all of its factions at the same time and only a very few members of them consider that these demands
constitute definite aims in their entirety. The further separate indi viduals or factions among them go, the more of these demands will
they make their own, and those few who see their own programme
in what has been outlined above might believe that thereby they
have put forward the utmost that can be demanded from the revo
lution. But these demands can in nowise suffice for the party of the proletariat. \Vhile the democratic petty bourgeois wish to bring the
revolution to a conclusion as quickly as possible, and with the achievement, at most, of the above demands, it is our interes. t and
our task to make the revolution permanent, until all more or less possessing classes have been forced out of their position of domi
nance, until the proletariat has conquered state power, and the asso ciation of proletarians, not only in one country but in all the domi
nant countries of the world, has advanced so far that competition among the proletarians of these countries has ceased and that at
least the decisive productive forces are concentrated in the hands of
the proletarians. For us the issue cannot be the alteration of private property but only its annihilation, not the smoothing over of class
antagonisms but the abolition of classes, not the improvement of
existing society but the foundation of a new one. That during the
further development of the revolution, the petty-bourgeois democ racy will for a moment obtain predominating influence in Germany
is' not open to doubt. The question, therefore, arises as to what the attitude of the proletariat and in particular of the League will be in
relation to it: 1. During the continuance of the present conditions where the
petty-bourgeois democrats are likewise oppressed; 2. In the next revolutionary struggle, which will give them the upper hand;
3. After this struggle, during the period of preponderance over the overthrown classes and the proletariat.
1. At the present moment, when the democratic petty bourgeois are everywhere oppressed, they preach in general unity and reconcil
iation to the proletariat, they offer it their hand and strive for the establishment of a large opposition party which will embrace all
shades of opinion in the democratic party, that is, they strive to
entangle the workers in a party organisation in which general social democratic phrases predominate, behind which their special inter-
506
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
ests are concealed and in which the particular dem ands of the prole tariat may n ot be brought forward for the sake of beloved peace. S u ch a union would turn out solely to their advantage a nd alto gether to the disadvantage of the proletariat. The proletariat would lose its whole independent, laboriously achieved position and once more sink down to bei n g an appendage o f official bourgeois dem oc racy. This
union
m u st, therefore, be
most
decisively
rejected .
I n stead of once again stooping to serve as the applauding chorus of the bourgeois democrats, the workers, must exert themselves to esta blish
and above all the Leag ue,
an independent,
secret and
public organisation of the workers' party al ongsi de of the official democrats and make each section the central poin t and nucleus of workers' societies in which the attitude and interests of the proletar i a t will be discus s ed independently of bourgeois influences. How far the bo urgeois dem ocra ts are from seriously considering an alliance in which the proletarians would s tand s i de by side with them with equal power and equal rights is shown, for exa mple, by the Breslau democrats who, in their organ, the
Nelle Oder-Zeitung,2 m o s t
furiously attack the i ndepen dently orga n ised workers, whom they style Socialists. In the case of a struggle against a common adversary no special union is required. As soon as such an adversary has to be fought directly, the interests of both parties, for the m oment, coin . cide, and, as previously, so also in the future, this connection , calcu la ted to l ast only for the moment, will arise of itself. It is self-evi dent that in the im pending bloody conflicts, as in all earlier ones, i t i s the workers who , i n the main, will have t o win t h e victory b y their courage, determination a n d self-sacrifice. A s previous ly, so also in this struggle, the mass of the petty bourgeois will as long as possi ble remain hesitant, undecided a n d inactive, and then, as soon as the issue has been decided, will seize the victory for themselves , will call upon the workers to m a in t a i n tranquillity and return to their work, will guard against so-cal led excesses a n d bar the proletariat from the fruits of victory . It.is not in the power of th e \vorkers to prevent the petty-bourgeois democrats from doing this , but it is
in
their power to make it difficult for them to gain the upper hand a s against the a r m ed proletariat, and t o dictate s u ch conditions to them tha t the rule of the b o urgeois democrats will from the o utset bear within it the seeds of their downfall, and that their su bse quent extrusion by the rule of the proletariat will be con siderably facilitated. Above all thing s, the workers m u s t counteract, as much
���� ring the conflict and im mediately after the
as is at all poss s trugg le, the b 2.
� ois
endeavours to allay the storm, and must
Neue Oder-ZeituIIg (New Oder Gazette): Appeared oiaily i n Breslau i n 1849-55.
Address t o the Communist League
5 ,0 7
compel the democrats to carry out their present terrorist phrases . T h e i r actions must be so aimed a s to prevent the direct revolution ary excitement from being suppressed again immediately after the victory. On the contrary, they must keep it alive as l ong as possible. Far from opposing so-called excesses, instances of popular revenge against hated individuals or public buildings that are associated only with hateful recollections, such instances must not only be tolerated but the leadership of them taken in hand. During the struggle and after the struggle, the workers m ust, at every opportunity, put for ward their own demands alongside of the demands of the bourgeois democra ts . They must demand guarantees for the workers as s oon as the democratic bourgeois set about taking over t h e government. I f necessary they must obtain these guarantees by force and in gen eral they must see to it that the new rulers pledge the mselves to all possible concessions and promises-the surest way to compromise them . In general , they must in e\'ery way restrain as far as possible the intoxication of victory and the enthusiasm for the new state of things, which make their appearance after every victorious street battle, by a calm and dispassionate estimate of the situation and by unconcealed mistrust in the new government. Alongside of the new official governments they must establish simultaneously their own revolutionary workers' governments, whether in the form of munici pal committees and m unicipal council s or in the form of workers' clubs or workers' committees, so that the bourgeois-democratic gov ernments not only immediately lose the support of the workers but from the outset see themselves supervised and threatened by author-. ities which are backed by the whole mass of the workers . In a word, from the first moment of victory, mistrust must be directed no longer against t h e conquered reactionary party, but against the workers' previous allies, against the party that wishes to exploit the common victory for itself alone . 2. B u t in o rder to be able energetically and threateningly to oppose this party, whose treachery to the workers will begin from the first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organise& The arming of the whole p roletariat with rifles , muskets, cannon and munitions must be put through at once, the revival of the old Citizens' Guard directed against the workers must be resisted. How ever, where the l a tter is not feasible the workers must attempt to organise themselves independently as a proletarian guard with com manders elected by themselves and with a general staff o f their own choosing, and to put themselves at the command not of the state authority but o f the revolutionary community councils which the workers will have managed to get adopted. Where workers are employed a t the expense of the state they must see that they are
508
Revolutionary Prog ram and Strategy
arm e d and organised in a separate corps with commanders of their
own choosing or as part o f the proletarian guar d . Arms and am mu
nition must not be surrendered on any pretext; any att.empt at dis
arming must be frus trated, if necessary by force. Destruction of the
influence o f the bourgeois democrats upon the workers, immediate independent and armed
organisation
o f the
workers
and
th e
enforcement o f conditions as difficult and compromising a s p ossible
upon the inevitable mom entary rule of the bourgeois democracy these are the main points which th e proletariat and hence the
League m u s t keep in view during and after the impending insurrec tio n .
3 . A s s o o n a s the new governments have consolidated their posi
tions to some extent, their struggle against the workers will begin .
Here, in order . to be able to offer energetic opposition to the demo
cra tic petty bourgeois, it is above all necessary that the workers shall
be independently organised and centralised in club s . Afte r the over throw of the existing governments, the Central Committee wil l , a s
s o o n as i t is at a l l possible, betake itself to Germany, immed iately convene a congress and put before thc latter the necessary proposals
for the centralisation of the workers' c l u bs under a leadership estab lished in the chief seat of the movement. The speedy organisation
of at least a provincial interlinking of the workers' clubs is one of the m o s t i m p ortant points for the strengthening and development of the workers' party; the immediate consequence of the overthrow
of the existing governments will be the election o f
a
nationa l repre
sentative assembly. Here tIle proletariat must see to i t :
I . That n o groups of workers are barred on any pretext or by any
kind o f trickery on the part of local auth orities or government com missioners .
I I. That everywhere workers' candida tes are put up alongside of
the b ourgeois-democratic cand idates, that they should consist as far
as possible of members of the League, and that their election is
promoted by a l l possible means. Even where there i s no p rospect whatsoever of their being elected, the workers must p ut up their own candidates in order to preserve their independence, to count their forces and to bring before the public their revolutionary atti
tude and party s tandpoint. In this connection they must not allow
themselves to be sed uced by such arguments of the dem ocrats as,
for example, that by so doing they are splitting the democratic party
and making i t p� ble for the reactionaries to win. The ultimate
intention o �uch phrases is to dupe the proletariat. The advance which the proletarian party is bound to make by such independent
action i s infinitely more important than the d is a dvantage that
migh t be incurred by the presence o f a few reactionaries in the rep
resentative body. If the democracy from the outset comes out reso-
Address to the Communist League
5109
lutely and terroristically against the reaction, the influence of the
latter in the elections will be destroyed in advanc e.
The first point on which the bourgeois democrats will come into
conflict with the workers will be the abolition of feudalism . As in the first French Revolution, the petty bourgeois will give the feudal
lands to the peasants as free property, that is to say, try to leave the
rural proletariat in existence and form a petty-bourgeois peasant class which will go through the same cycle of i mpoverishment and
indebtedness which the French peasant is now still going through .
The workers must oppose this plan in the interest of the rural
proletariat and in their own interest. They must demand that the
confiscated feudal property remain state property and be converted
into workers' colonies cultivated by the associated rural proletariat with all the advantages of large-scale agriculture, through which the
principle of common property immediately obtains a firm basis in
the midst of the tottering bourgeois property relations . Just as the
democrats combine with the peasants so must the workers combine
with the rural proletariat. Further, the democrats will work either
directly for a federative republic, or, if they cannot avoid a single
and indivisible republic, they will at least attempt to cripple the cen
tral government by the utmost possible autonomy and independ
ence for the com munities3 and provinces. The workers, i n opposi
tion to this plan, must not only sti;ive fo r a single and indivisible
German r epublic, but also within this republic for the most deter
mined centralisation of power in the hands of the state authority.
They must not allow themselves to be misguided by the democratic talk of freedom for the communities, o f self-government, etc. I n a
country like Germany where there are still so many relics of the
M iddle Ages to be abolished, where there is so much local and pro vincial obstinacy to be broken, it must under no circumstances be
p ermitted that every village, every town and every province should put a new obstacle in the path of revolutionary activity, which can
proceed with full force only from the centre. It is not to be toler
ated that the present state of affairs should be renewed, that Ger�
mans must fight separately in every town and in every province for
one and the same advance . Least o f all is it to be tolerated that a
form of property, namely, communal property, which still lags
behind modern private property and which everywhere is necessarily
passing into the latter, together with the quarrels resulting from it
between poor and rich communities, as well as communal civil law,
with its trickery against the workers, that exists alongside of state
civil law, should be perpetuated by a so-called free communal con
stitution. As in France in 179 3 so today in Germany i t is the task of
3 . Community ( Gemeillde) :
is
employed here
in
a
T h i s term wide sense to
embrace both urban municipalities and rural communities.
510
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
the really revolutionary party to carry through the strictest central isation .4 We have seen how the democrats w i l l come to power with the next movement, how they will be compelled to propose more or less socialistic measures . I t will be asked what measures the workers ought to p ropose in reply. At the beginning of the movement, of course, the workers cannot yet propose any directly communistic measures . But they can : 1. Compel the democrats to interfere in as many spheres as possi ble of the hitherto existing social order, to disturb its regular course and t o compromise themselves as well as to concentrate the utmost possible productive forces, means of transport, factories, railways, etc., in the hands of the state; 2. They must drive the proposals of the democrats, who in any case will not act in a revolutionary but in a merely reformist manner, to the extreme and transform them into direct attacks upon private property; thus, for example, if the petty bourgeois pro pose purchase of the railways and factories, the workers must demand that these railways and factories shall be simply confiscated by the state without compensation as being the property of reac tionaries. If the democrats propose proportional taxes, the workers must demand progressive taxes; if the democrats themselves put for ward a moderately progressive tax, the workers m ust insist on a tax with rates that rise so steeply that big capital will be ruincd by it; if the democrats demand the regulation of state debts, the workers m u s t demand state bankruptcy. Thus, the demands of the workers must everywhere be governed by the concessions and measures of the democrats. If the German workers are not able to attain power and achieve their own class interests without completely going through a 4. It must be recalled today that this passage is based o n a misunderstand ing. A t that t i m e -thanks to t h e Bona partist and liberal falsifiers of history -it was considered as established that the French centralised machine of a d m i n i st r a t i o n had been introduced by t h e Great R e v o l u t i o n and in particular that i t h a d been operated by the Con vention as a n i n d i s pe n s a b l e and deci s i v e weapon for defeating the royalist and federalist reaction and the external enemy�-miw, however, a well known fact that throughout the whole revolution up to the eighteenth Brum aire the whole administration o f t h e d e p a r t m e n t s , arrondissem ents and com munes consisted o f authorities elected by the respective constituents them selves, and that these authorities acted with complete freedom within the gen eral s ta t e laws ; that precisely this
p r o v i n c i a l and local self-government, s i m i l a r t o t h e A m e r i c a n , became the most powerful l e v e r o f the revolution a n d i n d e e d t o such an extent that N"a poleon, immediately after his coup d'etat o f the eighteenth B r u m a i r e , has tened to replace i t by an administra tion by prefects, which s t i l l exists and which, therefore, was a pure instrument o f reaction from t h e beginning. But j ust as l i t t l e as l o c a l and p r o v i n c i a l self-government is i n c o n t r a d i c t i o n t o p o l i t i c a l , national centralisation, so i s i t t o an equally small e x t e n t necessar i l y bound u p w i t h that n a r r o w - m i n d e d , cantonal or communal self-seeking w h i c h s t r i k e s u s as s o repulsive i n Switzerland, - a n d w h i c h a l l t h e S outh German federal republicans wanted to m ak e th e rul e i n Germany i n 1 8 4 9.
[Engr:is, 1 8 8 5 edition]
Address to the Communist League
511
lengthy revolutionary development, they at least know for a cer tainty this time that th e first a ct of this apnoaching revolutionary drama will coincide with the direct victory of their own class in France and will be very much accelerated by i t . But they themselves m u s t do t h e utmost f o r their fi n a l victory by clarifying their minds as to what their class interests are, by taking u p their position as an independent party as soon a s possible and by not allowing themselves to be seduced for a single moment by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeois into refrain ing from the independent organisation of the party of the proletar iat. Their battle cry must be : The Revolution in Permanence.
Inaug ural Address of the Working Men's International Association KARL MARX
Marx wrote the Inaugural Address in October, 1 8 64 , as a charter document for t he Working Men's International Association
( -otherwise
known as the
First International ) , which was establis hed on September 28,
1 8 64, a t a
meeting in St. Martin's Hall in London. It was both a review of the work
ing-class movement since 1 84 8 and a program . Despite the echo of the
Communist Manifesto
in the closing words
( " Proletarians
of a l l countries,
Unite ! " ) , some have seen the Inaugural Address, with its salute to the English Ten Hours' Marxist Social
Bill,
as a herald o f the decreasingly revolutionary
Democratic m o vement of
the late nineteenth
century.
Against this interpretation must be set Marx ' s shorthand recapitulation of his theory of hi story and proletarian revolution in the statemen t here that "hired labor is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disa Jpear be fore associated labour plying its toil with a willing hand,
a
ready m ind, and
a joyous heart." Given the disparate character of the various national con tingents of the new association, some less radical than others, there was also a tactical reason for restraint on revolutionary rhetoric . As Marx wrote
to Engels on November 4, 1 8 64 : " I t was very difficult to frame the thing
s o that our view should appear in a form acceptable from the present stand point of the workers' movement . . . . It will take time before the reawak ened movement allows the old boldness of speech."
Working Men,
ing mas s � s has not It is a great fact t h a t the miser y of the work. . IS unnv alled for �hOO from 1 84 8 to 1 8 64> and yet this penod.
growt h of ItS comm erce . In the devel opme nt of its indust ry and the e class, of � ore than middl 1 8 5 0 , a mode rate organ of the Briti � h t s a n d Impo : ts of expor f I the t a avera ge inform ation , predi cted t h . . m would s m k to ns e p u a p sh EnglI cent, Engla nd were to rise 5 0 per the Exch equer of cellor Chan the 64, 8 1 , 7 zero . Alas! on April by the statem ent that the total deligh ted h i s parlia ment ary a u d ience 512
Inaugural Address
513
import and export trade o f England had grown i n 1 86 3 "to £44 3 , 9 5 5,000! that astonishing sum about three times the trade of the comparatively recent epoch of 1 84 3 ! " With all that, he was elo quent upon "poverty. " "Think," he exclaimed, "of those who are on the border of that region," upon "wages . . . not increased"; upon "h uman life . . . in nine cases out o f ten but a struggle of existence ! " He did not speak of the people of Ireland, gradually replaced by machinery in the north, and by sheep-walks in the south, though even the sheep in that unhappy country are decreas ing, it is true, n ot at so rapid a rate as the men . He did not repeat what then had been j ust betrayed by the highest representatives of the upper ten thousand in a s udden fi t of terror. \"hen the garottel panic had reached a certain height, the House o f Lords caused an inquiry to be made into, and a report to be published upon, transportation and penal servitude. Out came the murder in the bulky Blue B ook of 1 8 6 3 , and proved it was, by official facts and figures, that the worst of the convicted criminals, the penal serfs of England and Scotland, toiled much less and fared far better than the agricultural labourers of England and Scotland. But this was n o t all . When, consequent upon the Civil 'Var in America, the operatives of Lancashire and Cheshire were thrown upon the streets, the same House of Lords sent to the manufacturing districts a physician commissioned to investigate into the smallest possible amount of carbon and nitrogen, to be administered in the cheapest and plainest from, which on an average might just suffice to "avert starvation diseases. " Dr. Smith, the medical deputy, ascertained tha t 2 8,000 grains of carbon, and 1 , 3 3 0 grains of nitrogen were the weekly allowance that would keep an average adult . . . just over the level of starvation diseases, and he found furthermore that quantity pretty nearly to agree with the scanty nourishment to which the pressure of extreme distress had actually reduced the cotton operatives .2 B ut now mark ! The same learned Doctor was later on again deputed by the medical officer of the Privy Council to inquire into the nourishment of the poorer labouring classes . The results . of his researches are embodied in the "S ixth Report on Public Health," published by order of Parliament in the course of the pres ent year. Wha t did the Doctor discover? That the silk weavers, the needle women, the kid glovers, the stocking weavers, and so forth, received, oil an average, not even the distress pittance of the cotton 1. Carollers : Street robbers whose at tacks i ncreased i n London i n the begin ning o f the sixties to such an ext ent that Parliament was compelled to take up the matter. 2. We need hardly remind the reader that, apart from the elements o f water , and certain inorganic substances, car bon and n itrogen form the raw mate-
rials o f human food. However, to nour ish the human system, those s i m p l e chemical constituents must be supplied in the form o f vegetable or animal sub stances. Potatoes, for i nstance, contain mainly carbon, while wheaten bread contains carbonaceous and nit rogenous substances i n a due proportion. [Marx]
51 4
R evolutionary Program and Strategy
operatives, not even the amount of carbon and nitrogen " j ust sufficient to avert starvation diseases . " "l\loreover," w e quote from t h e report, " a s regards t h e examined families of the agricultural population, it appeared that more than a fifth were with less than the estimated sufficiency of carbonaceous food, that more than one-third were with less than the estimated suf ficiency of nitrogenous food, and that in three counties ( Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Somersetshire ) insufficiency of nitrogenous food was the average local die t . " "It must be remembered, " a dds the official report, " that privation of food is very reluctantly borne, and that, as a rule, great poorness of diet will only come when other pri vations have preceded it. . . . Even cleanliness will have been found costly or difficult, and if there still be self-respectful endeavours to maintain it, every such endeavour will represent additional pangs of hunger. " "These are painful reflections, especially when it i s remem bered that the poverty to which they advert is not the deserved pov erty of idleness; in all cases it i s the poverty of working populations. I ndeed, the work which obtains the scanty pittance of food is for the most part excessively prolonged . " The report brings out the strange, and rather unexpected fact : "That of the divisions o f the United Kingdom," England, 'Vales, Scotland, and I reland, "the agricultural population o f England," the richest division, "is consid erably the worst fed"; but that even the agricultural labourers of Berkshire, Oxfords hire, and Somersetshire, fare better than great numbers of skilled indoor operativ.es of the East of London . Such are the official statements published by order of Parliament in 1 8 64, during the millennium of free trade, at a time when the Chancellor of the Exchequer told the House of Commons that " th e average condition o f t h e British labourer h a s improved in a degree we know to be extraordinary and unexampled in the history of any country or any age . " Upon these official congratulations jars the dry remark of the official Public Health Report: " The public health of a country means the health of its masses, and the masses will scarcely be healthy unless, to their very base, they be a t least moder ately prosperous ." Dazzled by the "Progress of the Na tion" statistics dancing before Chancellor of the Exchequer exclaims in wild ecstas y : "From"1'842 t o 1 8 5 2 the taxable income o f the country increased by 6 pt!r cent; in the eight years from 1 8 5 3 to 1 86 1 , it has increased from the basis taken in 1 8 5 3 20 per cen t ! the fact is so astonishing as to be almost incredible! . . . This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power," adds M r . Gladstone, " i s entirely confined to classes of property! " I f you want t o know under what conditions o f broken health, taint � d morals and mental ruin, that "intoxicating augmentation of
�.�s, !he
I naugural Address
515
wealth and power entirely confined to classes a f property" was, and is being produced by the classes oflabour, look to the picture hung up in the last "Public Health Report" of the workshops of tailors, printers and dressmakers! Compare the "Report of the Children's Employment Commission" of 1 86 3 , where it is stated, for instance, tha t : "The potters as a class, both men and women, represent a m uch degenerat.ed population, both physically and mentally, " that " the unhealthy child is an unhealthy parent in his turn," that "a progressive deterioration of the race must go on, " and that "the degenerescence of the population of Staffordshire would be even greater were it not for the constant recruiting from the a djacent country, and the intermarriages with more healthy races . " Glance at Mr. Tremenheere's Blue Book on the " Grievances complained of by the Journeymen Bakers " ! And who has n o t shuddered at the para doxical statement made by the inspectors of 'factories, all illustrated by the Registrar General, that the Lancashire operatives, while put u p o n the distress pittance of · food, were actually improving i n health, because of their temporary exclusion b y t h e cotton famine from the cotton factory, and that the mortality of the child r en was decreasing, because their mothers were now at last allowed to give them, instead of Godfrey's cordial, their own breasts . Again reverse the medal ! The I n come and Property Tax Returns laid before the House of Commons on July 20, 1 8 64, teach us that the persons with yearly incomes, valued by the tax-gatherer at £ 5 0,000 and upwards, had, from April 5, 1 86 2 , to April 5, 1 86 3 , been joined by a dozen and one, their n umber having increased in that single year from 67 to 80 . The same returns disclose the fact that about 3 , 000 persons divide amongst themselves a yearly income o f about £ 2 5 ,000,000 sterling, rather more than the total revenue doled out annually to the whole mass 0-£ the agricultural labourers o f England and Wales . Open the cens us of 1 86 1 , and you will find that the number of the male landed proprietors of England and Wales had decreased from 1 6 , 9 3 4 in 1 8 5 1 , to 1 5 ,066 in 1 86 1 , so . tha t the concentration of land had grown in 1 0 years 11 per cen t . If the concentration of the soil of the coun try in a few hands proceeds at the same rate, the land question will become singularly simpli fied, as it had become in the Roman empire, when Nero grinned a t the discovery that half the Province o f Africa was owned b y six gentleme n . W e have dwelt s o long upon these "facts so astonishing to be almost incredible, " because England heads the Europe of commerce and industry. It will be remembered that some months ago one of the refugee sons of Louis Philippe publicly cong r atulated the Eng lish agricultural labourer on the superiority of his lot over that of his less florid comrade on the other side of the Channel . Indeed,
516
Revol utionary Program and Strategy
with local colours changed, and on a s cale somewhat contracted, the English acts reproduce themselves in all the industrious and progres sive countries of the Continent. In all of them there has taken place, since 1 8 4 8 , an unheard-of development of industry, and an undreamed-of expansion of imports and exports. In all of them "the augmentation of wealth and power entirely confined to classes of property" was truly "intoxicating." In all of them, as in England, a minority of the working classes got theif real wages somewhat ad vanced; while in most cases the monetary rise of wages denoted no more a real access of com forts than the inmate of the metropolitan poor-house or orphan asylum, for instance, was in the least bene fited by his first necessaries costing £9 1 5 s . 8d. in 1 8 6 1 against £7 7s. 4d. in 1 8 5 2. . Everywhere the great mass of the working classes were sinking down to a lower depth, at the same rate a t least, that those above them were rising in the social scale . In all countries of E urope it has now become a truth demonstrable to every unpreju diced mind, and only denied by those, whose interest it is to hedge o ther people in a fool's paradise, that n o improvement o f machin ery, no appliance of science to production, no contrivances of com munication, no new colonies, n o emigration, no opening of markets, no free trade, nor all these things put together, will do away with the miseries of the industrious masses; but that, on the present false base, every fresh development of the productive powers of labour must tend to deepen social contrasts and point social antagonisms. Death o f starvation rose almost t o the rank of a n institution, during this intoxicating epoch of economical progress, in the metropolis of the British Empire. That epoch is marked in the annals of the world by the quickened return, the widening compass, and the deadlier effects of the social pest called a commercial and industrial CrISIS . After the failure of the Revolutions of 1 848 , all party organisa tions and party journals of the working classes were, on the Conti nent, crushed by the iron hand of force, the most advanced sons o f
-
labour fled in despair to t h e Transatlantic Republic, and the short lived dreams of emancipation vanished before an epoch of industrial fever, moral marasme, and political reaction. The defeat of the Con 'tiitm tal working classes, partly owed to the diplomacy of the Eng lish Government, acting then as now in fraternal solidarity with the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, soon spread its contagious effects to this side of the Channe l . While the rout of their Continental brethren unmanned the English working classes, and broke their faith in their own cause, it restored to the landlord and the money-lord their somewhat shaken confidence. They insolently withdrew con cessions already advertised. The discoveries of new goldlands led to an immense exodus, leaving an irreparable void in the ranks of the
I naugural Address
51 7
B ritish proletariat. Others of its formerly active members were caught by the temporary bribe of greater work ·and wages, and turned into "political blacks." All the efforts made a t keeping up, or remodeling, the Chartist Movement, failed signally; the press organs of the working class died one by one of the apathy of the masses, and, in point of fact, never before seemed the English working class so thoroughly reconciled to a state of political nullity. If, then, there had been no solidarity o f action betw.een the British and the Continental working classes, there was, at all events, a solidarity of defeat. And yet the period passed since the Revolutions of 1848 has not been without its compensating features. \Ve shall here only point to two great facts. After a thirty years' struggle, fought with most admirable perse verance, the English working classes, improving a momentaneous split between the landlords and money-lords, succeeded in carrying the Ten Hours' Bil l . The immense physical, moral and intellectual benefits hence accruing to the factory operatives, h alf-yearly chroni cled in the reports of the inspectors o f factories, are now acknowl edged on all sides . Most of the Con tinental governments had to accept the English Factory Act in more or less modified forms, and the English Parliament itself is every year compelled to enlarge its sphere of actio n . B u t besides its practical import, there w a s some thing else to exalt the marvellous success of this working men ' s measure. Through their most notorious organs of science, such a s D r . Ure, Professor Senior, and other sages o f that stamp, t h e middle class had predicted, and to their heart's content proved, that any legal restriction of the hours of labour must sound the death knell of British industry, which, vampyre like, could but live by sucking blood, and children's blood, too. In olden times, child murder was a mysterious rite of the religion of Moloch, b u t i t was practised on some very solemn occasions only, once a year perhaps, and then Moloch had no exclusive bias for the children of the poor . This struggle about the legal restriction of the hours of labour raged the more fiercely since, apart from frightened avarice, it told indeed upon the great contest between the blind rule o f the supply and demand laws which form t h e political economy of t h e middle class, and social production controlled by social foresight, which forms the political economy o f the working class . H ence the Ten Hours' Bill was not only a great practical success; i t was the victory of a principle; it was the first time that in broad daylight the political economy of the middle class succumbed to the political economy of the working class . B u t there was in store a still greater victory of the political econ omy of labour over the political economy of property. We speak of
51 8
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
the co-operative movement, especially the co-operative factori es raised by the unassiste d efforts of a few bold " h a n d s . " The value of these great social experiments cannot be over-rated. By deed, in stead ' of by argument, they have shown that production on a large sc ale, and in accord with the behests o f modern science, m a y be carried on with o u t the existence of a class o f masters employing a class of hands; that to bear fruit, the means of labo ur need not be monopo lised as a means of dominion over, and of extortion against, the labouring man himself; and that, like slave labour, like serf labour, hired labour i s but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disap pear before associated labour plying its toil with a willing h an d ,
a
ready mind, and a joyous heart. In Engl a n d , the seeds of the co-oper ative system were sown by Robert Owen; the working men ' s experi ments, tried on the Continent, were, in fact, the practical upshot of the theories, not invented, but loudly proclaimed, in
1 84 8 .
1 848 to 1 8 6 4 has proved beyond doubt that, however excellent in principle, A t the s a m e time, the experience o f t h e period from
and however useful in practice, co-operative labour, if kept within the narrow circle of the casual efforts of pri"ate workmen, will never b e able to arrest the growth in geometrical progression of monopoly, t o free the masses, n o r even t o perceptibly lighten the burden of their miseries. I t i s perha p s for this very reason that plausible noble m e n , philanthropic m iddle-class spouters, and even keen political economists; have all at once turned nauseously complimentary t o the very co-operative labour system they had vainly tried to nip in the bud by deriding it as the U topia of the dreamer, or stigmatising it as the s acrilege of the Social i s t . To save the industrious masses, co operative labour ought to be developed to national dimensions, and consequently, to be fostered b y national mean s . Yet, the lords of land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defence and p erpetuation of their economical monopolies. So far from promoting, they will continue to lay every possible im pediment in the way o f the emancipation o f labour. Remember the
" sneer with whi �h, last sessi� n, �ord P,almerston p ut down the advo, ·ertes of the I nsh Tenants
RIght B Il l . The H ouse o f C om m o n s,
cried he, is a house of landed p roprietors . To conquer political p ower has therefore become the great duty of the working classes , They seem to h ave comprehended this, for in England, Germany, Italy, and France there have taken place simultaneous revivals, and simultaneous efforts are being made a t the political reorga nisatio n of the working men's party. One element o f success they p ossess-numbe rs; but numbers weigh only in the balance, i f united by combination and led by knowledge. Past experience has shown how disregard o f that b o n d of brotherpood which o u g h t to exist between the workmen of different
I naugura( Address
5 19
countries, a n d incite them t o s t a n d firmly b y each other i n all t heir struggles for emancipation, will be chastised by the common dis comfiture of their incoherent efforts. This thought prompted the working men o f different countries assembled o n September 2 8, 1 864, in public meeting at S t . Martin ' s Hall, to found the Interna tional Association . Another conviction swayed tha t meeting. I f the emancipation of the working classes requires their fraternal concurrence, how are they to fulfil that great mission with a foreign policy in pursuit of criminal designs, playing upon national preju dices, a n d squandering in piratical wars the people's blood a n d treas ure? It was not the wisd om of the ruling classes, but the heroic resistance to their criminal folly by the working classes of England that saved the West of Europe from plunging headlong into an i n f a m o u s crusade f o r t h e perpetuation a n d propagation of slavery on the other side of the Atlantic. The sham eless approval, mock sym pathy,
or i d iotic indifference , with which the upper classes
of
E u rope have witnessed the mountain fortress of the Caucasus fall ing a prey to, and heroic Poland being a s sassinated by, Russia; the immense a n d u n resisted encroachments of that barbarous power, whose head i s at St. Petersburg, a n d whose h a n d s are i n every cabi n e t of Europe, have taught the working classes the duty to master themselves the mysteries of international politics; to watch the d i p lomatic acts of t h e i r respective Governments; to c o u n t e r a c t them, i f necess a ry, b y a l l m eans in their power; when unable t o prevent, to combine in simultaneous denunciations, a n d to vindicate the simple laws of morals a n d justice, which ought t o govern the relations of private individuals, a s the rules paramount of t h e intercourse o f nations . The fight for such a foreign policy forms part of the general struggle for the emancipation of the working classes . Proletarians of a l l countries, U ni t e !
E conomics and Politics in the Labor Movement KARL MARX That the trade unionist pressure for a s h orter working day end orsed i n the Inaugural Address did not mean to Marx the abandonment of the revolu tionary politics of class struggle is shown in the following selection from his
letter of November 2 3 , 1 8 7 1 , to F_ B olte .
*
*
*
The political movement of the working class h a s as its ulti
mate ob ject, of course, the conquest of political power for this class, and this n a t u rally requires a previous organisation of the working class developed up to a certain point and arising precisely from its economic struggles. On t h e other hand, however, every movement in which the work ing class comes out as a class against the ruling classes and tries to coerce them by pressure from without is a political movement. For instance, the attempt in a particular factory o r even in a particular trade to force a shorter working day o u t of individual capitalists by strikes, etc . , is a purely economic movement. On the other hand, the movement to force through a n eight-h o ur, etc ., law is a political movement. And in this way out of the separate economic m ovements of the workers there grows up everywhere a p olitical move
\ � ent,
that is to say, a movement of the class, with the object of ettw rcing its interests in a general form, i n a form possessing gen eral, socially coercive force . While these movements presuppose a certain degree of previous organization, they are in turn equally a ' means of developing this organization. Where the working class is not yet far enough advanced in its organization to undertake a decisive campaign against the collective power, i . e . , the political power of the ruling classes, i t must a t any rate b e trained for this by continual agitation against this power and by a h ostile attitude toward the policies of the ruling classe s _
520
Against Personality Cults KARL MARX Marx m a y have been the person to coin the now commonly used term "personality cult." Moreover, this passage from his letter of November 10,
1 8 7 7 , to W . BIos was cited b y Nikita Khrushchev in his "secret speech" before the closed session o f the Soviet Twentieth Party Congress i n Febru ary, 1 9 5 6-to support his claim that any cult of personality, such as Sta lin's, was alien to Marxism and to Communism . *
Neither o f u s ! cares a straw f o r popularity. A proof of this i s , for example, that, because of aversion to any personality cult, I have never permitted the numerous expressions of appreciation from var ious countries with which I was pestered during the existence of the International to reach the realm of publicity, and have never answered them, except occasionally by a rebuke. \Vhen Engels and I first joined the secret Communist Society we made it a condition that everything tending to encourage superstitious belief in author ity was to be removed from the statutes . ( Later on Lassalle exerted his influence in the opposite direction. * * * ) * F o r the view, and supporting evi dence, that personality cults are not alien to Marxism o r Communism as movements o r forms o f culture, see Robert C . Tucker, Stalin as Revo-
521
lutionary, 1 8 79-1 9 2 9 : A Study i n His tory and Personality ( New Yor k : Nor
ton, 1 9 7 3 ) , pp. 3 4-6 3 , 2 7 9-2 8 8 . The reference i s t o himself and En gels. [R. T.]
1.
The Po ssibility of Non' Violent Re vol uti on KARL MARX
�
Marx delivered this speech at Amsterdam on September 8, 1 8 7 2. , after a congress of the First Internation a l . Its restatement of revolutionary goals
contained an important qualification : that in some countries the work ers might attain the socialist goal "by peaceful mea n s . " For a commentary on this , see the Intro d uction, above, p. xxxvi. The translation and not e s are by Saul K. Padover.
In the eighteenth century the kings and the potentates were in the
habit of meeting at The Hague to discuss the interests of their
dynasties.
It is precisely in this place that we wanted to hol d our workers'
meeting, despite attempts to arouse a pprehensions among us. We
wanted to appear amid the most reactionary popula tion, to reinforce the existence, propagation, and hope for the future of our great Associa tion .1
When o u r decision became known, i t w a s rumored that we
sen t emissaries to prepare the ground . Yes, we do not deny that we have such emissaries everywhere; but they are · mostly unknown
1 to p s. Our emissaries in The Hague were the workers whose labor is \alioilsome as that of our emissaries in Amsterdam, who are likewise workers laboring sixteen hours a day. Those are our emissaries; we
h ave no other; and in all the countries where we recruit we find them prepared to receive us with open hearts, because they under stand immediately that we strive to improve their lot.
The congress at The Hague has brought to maturity three impor
tant points :
It has proclaimed the necessity for the working class to fight the old, disintegrating society on political as wel l as social grounds; and
we congratulate ourselves that this resolution of the London Con ference will henceforth be in our Statutes . In our midst there has been formed a group advocating the work
ers' abstention from political action. \Ve have considered it our 1.
The
International
Working
Men's
Association.
522
The Possibility of N on- V iolent Revolution
523
duty to declare how dangerous and fatal for our cause such princi ples appear to be. Someday t h e worker must seize political power in order to build up the new organization of labor; he must overthrow the old poli tics which sustain the old institu tions, if he is not to lose heaven on earth, like the old Christians who neglected and despised politics . B u t we have not asserted that the ways to achieve that goal are everywh ere the same. You know that the institutions, mores, a n d traditions of various couI?-tries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries...,- s uch a s America, England, and if I were
o
\, morc familiar with your institutions, I would perhaps also add HoL � land-where the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means . This being the case, we must also recognize the fact that in most
countries on the Continent the lever of o u r revolution must be force; i t is force t o which w e must someday appeal in order to erect the rule of the labor. The Hague Congress has granted the General Council2 new and wider authority. In fact, a t the moment when the kings are assem bling in Berlin; whence are to be issued new and decisive measures of oppression against us by the mighty representatives of feudalism and of the past-precisely a t that moment, when persecution is being organized, the congress of The Hague considered it proper and necessary to enlarge the authority of the General Council and to centralize all action for the approaching struggle, which would otherwise be impotent in isolation . And, m oreover, where else coul d the authorizations of the General Council arouse disquiet if not among our enemies? Does the General Council Jl ave a bureauc racy and an armed police to compel obedience? Is not its authority entirely
a
moral one, and does it not submit its decisions to the
judgment of the various federations entrusted with their execut i o n ? Under such conditions-without an army, without police, without courts-on the day when the kings are forced to maintain their power only with moral influence and moral authority, they will form ,a weak obstacle to the forward march of the revol ution. Finally, the congress of The Hague has moved the h eadquarters of the General Council to New York. Many, even among our friends, seem to have wondered a t such a decision. Do they then forget that America will be the workers' continent par excellence, that half a million men-workers-emigrate there yearly, arid that on such soil, where the worker dominates, the I n ternational is bound to strike strong roots? Moreover, the decision of the congress gives the General Council the right to employ [in Europe] any mem2 . The London-based administrative Association.
body of
the International Working
Men's
5 24 bers
Revolutionary Program and Strategy whose
collaboration
it
considers
necessary
and
useful
for
the common welfare . Let us trust its prudence a n d hope it will s uc ceed in selecting persons who will be capable of carrying out their task and who will understand how to h ol d up the banner of our Association in Europe with a firm h a n d . Citizens, let us t h i n k of t h e basic principle of t h e International : Solidarity. Only when we have established this life-giving principle on a sound basis among the numerous workers of all countries will we attain the great final goal which we h ave set ourselves . The revo l u t i o n must be carried out with solidarity; this is the great lesson of the French Commune, which fell because n o n e of the other centers -Berlin, Madrid, etc .-developed ·great revolutionary movements comparable to the mighty uprising of the Paris proletariat. S o far as I am concerned, I will continue my work a n d constantly strive to strengthen among all workers this solidarity that i s so fruit ful for the future . No, I do not withdraw from the International, a n d all the rest of my l ife will be, a s h av e been all my efforts of the past, dedicated to the triumph of the social ideas which-you may b e a s s u red ! -will lead to the world domination b y th e proletariat.
Critique of the Gotha Prog ram KARL MARX
Marx's most detailed pronouncement on programmatic matters was made i n this letter of early May, 1 87 5 , to the leaders o f the so-called Eisenach fa,ction of the German Social Democratic movement, with whom he and Engels were in close association. At the forthcoming party congress i n the town of Gotha, the Eisenachers planned to unite with the Lassallean fac tion to form a u nified German Social Democratic Party, and they sent the draft program for a united party to Marx and Engels for their comments. They found it fundamentally flawed by the influence of ideas of Ferdinand Lassalle, and Marx's lengthy reply to the Eisenachers, a letter i n the form o f marginal notes on the draft program , was vitriolic i n this regard. Practi cal political interests were involved i n the unification movement, however, and the Gotha Congress, held i n late May, 1 8 7 5 , adopted the draft pro gram with only minor alterations. Much later, in 1 89 1 , when the party h a d declared i t s intention o f adopting a new program, Engels caused Marx's
programmatic letter to be published i n the party organ Neue Zeit, and gave i t the title "Critique o f the Gotha Program ."
I 1 . "Labour is the source of all wealth and all culture,
and
since u se ful la-
bour is possible only in society and through society. t h e proceeds of labour belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society."
First Part of the Paragraph: "Labour is the source of all wealth and all culture . " Labour i s
n o t the source of all wealth . Nature is j us t a s much the
source o f use values ( an d i t is surely of such that material wealth consists ! ) a s labour, which itself i s o nly the manifestation of a force of nature, human labour power. The above phrase i s to be found in all children 's primers and is .correct in s o far as it i s
implied that
labour is performed with the appurtenant subjects and instruments.
52 5
,
;,
�
526
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
But a socia list progra m m e canqot allow such bou rgeois phrases to pass over in si lence the conditions that alone give them mea n i n g . A n d in so far a s m a n from the beginning behaves towards nature, the primary source of all instruments a n d subjects of la bour, a s a n owner, treats h e r as belonging to h i m , his lab o u r becomes the source of use values, therefore also of wea l t h . The bourgeo i s have very good grounds for falsely ascribing supernatural creative power to labour; since precisely from the fact that lab o u r depends on n ature it follows that the m a n who p osseses n o o ther property tha n his l a bour power must, in a l l conditions of society a n d culture, be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labour. He can work o n l y with thei r permis sion, hence live only with their permissio n . Let u s now leave the sentence a s i t stands, or rather limps . What would one have expected in conclus i o n ? Obviously this : " S ince la bour is the source of a l l wealth, no one in society can appropriate wealth except a s the p roduct of l a bour. Therefore, if he himself does not work, he lives by the la bou r o f others and a l s o acquires h i s culture a t t h e expense o f the l a b o u r o f others . " I n s tead o f this, b y mea n s o f the verbal rivet "and since" a seco n d propositio is added in order to draw a concl usion from this a n d
� t� first one. Second P�t of the Paragraph:
n o t from
society a n d t h rough society."
" U seful l ab o u r is possible only in
According to the first proposition, la bour was the source of all wealth and all culture; therefore no society i s p o s s ible without l ab o u r . Now we learn, conversely, that no " u seful " labour is possi ble without society. One could j us t as well have said that only i n society ca n useless and even socially harmful labour b e come a branch of gain ful occu pation, that only i n society can one live by bei n g idle, etc ., etc.-in short, one could j us t a s well have copied the whole o f Roussea u . A n d wha t i s " usef u l " la bour? S u rely only labour which produces
the intended useful result. A savage-and man was a savage after he had ceased to be an ape-who k i l l s a n animal with a s tone, who collects fruits, e t c . , performs " useful" l ab o u r . Thirdly. The Conclusion: "And s i n c e useful l ab o u r is possible only i n society and through s ociety, the p roceeds of l abour belong u n d iminished with e q u al right to all members o f society . "
A fine conclusio n ! If useful labour is possi b l e only in society and through society, the proceeds of lab o u r belong to society-and only so much therefrom accrues to the individual worker as is not required to maintain the " condition" o f l a bour, society. In fact, this proposition has a t all times been made use of by the champions of the st ate
of society
prevailing at any given time . First
Critique of the Gotha Program
527
come th e claims of the government and everything that sticks to it,
since i t is the social organ for the maintenance of the social order;
then come the claims of the various kinds of private property, for
the various kinds of private property are the foundations of society,
etc. One sees that such hol low phrases can b e twisted and turned as
desired.
T h e first and second parts o f the paragraph have so me intelligible
connection only in the following wording :
"Labour becomes the source of wealth and culture only as socia l
labour," or, what is the same thing, "in and through society. "
T h i s proposition i s incontestably correct, fo r although isolated
la bour ( its material conditions presupposed ) can create use ,'alues, i t can create neither wealth n o r culture. B u t equally incon testable is this other proposition :
" I n proportion as labour develops socially, a n d becomes thereby
a source of wealth and culture , poverty and destitution develop
a mong the workers, a n d weal t h a n d culture among the non-work
e rs . "
This is the l a w o f a l l history hitherto. '\That, therefore, h a d to b e ' d o n e here, instead of setting down general phrases a bout "la bour" and "socie ty," was to prove concretely h o w in present capitalist
society the material, etc . , conditions have a t last been created which enable and compel the workers to lift this social curs e .
I n fact, however, t h e w h o l e paragraph, bungled in style a n d con
tent, is only there in order to inscribe the Lassa llean catchword of
the " u n d iminished proceeds of labour" as a slogan at the top of the
party banner. I shall r,e turn later to the " p roceeds of labour," "eq ual
right," etc., since the s a m e thing recurs i n a somewhat different form further o n . 2.
" I n present-day society. the instruments o f labou r are t h e monopo l y o f
the capitalist class; t h e resulting dependence o f the working class i s t h e cause o f miser y a n d servitude in a l l i t s form s . "
This senten ce, borrow ed from the R u l es o f the Intern ational ' is . Incorr ect in this "impr oved" editio n . In present -day society the instrum ents of labour are the monop , olY o f the landow ners ( the monop oly of proper ty i n land is even the . aSlS of � he mon opol y of capital ) and the capital ists . In the passage I n questIO n, th e Rules o f the Intern ational do not men tion either the o � e or the other class o f monop olists . They speak of the " mo llOp ? ZSer of the means of labour , that is, the source s of life." The addItio n, "sourc es of life," makes i t su fficient ly ' clear that l a n d is include d in the instrum ents of l abo u r . The correct ion was in troduc ed becaus e Lassal le, for reasons n o w general ly k n o w n , attacke d only the capital ist c l ass and n o t the l a n d-
�
�
528
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
owners. I n England, the capitalist i s usually not even the own er of the l an d on which h i s factory stands .
3 . "The emancipation o f labour demands the promotion of the instr u ments of labour to the common property of society a n d the co-operative reg u lation of the total labour with a fair distribution of the proceeds of la bour."
"Promotion of t h e instruments o f labour to t h e common prop
erty" ought obviously to read their "conversion into the commo n
property"; but this only in passing.
\Vhat are "proceeds of l abour"? The product o f labour or its
yalue? And in the latter case, is i t the total value o f the product or
only that part o f the value which labour has newly added to th e ,'alue of the means of production consumed?
"Proceeds of labour" is a loose notion which Lassalle has put in
the place of definite economic conceptions. \Vhat is "a fair distribu tion" ?
D o n o t the bourgeois assert that the present-day distribution is
"fair " ? And i s �t not, in fact, the only "fair" distribution on the
� ent-day m ode
basis o f the p r
of production? Are economic rela
tions regulated b\y legal conceptions or do not, on the contrary, legal
relations arise frlhn economic ones? Have not also the socialist sec tarians the most varied notions about "fair" distribution?
To understand wha t i s implied in this connection by the phrase
" fair distribution," we must take the first paragraph and this one together. Th e latter presupposes a society ,,,herein "the instrum ents
of labour are common propert-y and the total labour is cooperatively
regulated," and from the first paragraph we learn that "the proceeds
of labour belong undiminished with equal right to all members of
society . "
" T o all members o f society " ? To those w h o do n o t work as well?
\ Vhat remains then of the "undiminished proceeds o f labour"? Only
to those members of society who work? What remains then of the " equal right" of all members of society?
But "all members of society" and "equal right" are obviously
mere phra ses . The kernel consists i n this, that in this communist
society every worker must receive the "undiminished" Lassallean " proceeds of labour."
Let us take first of all the words "proceeds of labour" in the sense
of the product o f labour; then the co-operative proceeds of labour are the total social product. From this must now be deducte d : First, cover for replacement o f the means of p ro duction used u p . Secondly, additional portion for expansion o f producti o n . Thirdly, reserve
or
insurance f u n d s to pr ovide against accidents,
dislocations caused by natural calamities, etc .
Critiq ue of th e Goth a Program
529
These d eductions from the "undiminished proceeds of labour" a r e a n economic necessity and t h e i r magnitude is to be determined according to available means and forces, and partly by computation of probabilities, but they are in no way calculable by equi t y . Th ere remains t h e o t h e r part of t h e total product, intended to serve as means of consumption . B e fore this is divided among the individuals, ,there has to be deducted again, from i t :
First, the general costs o f administration not belonging t o pro duction. This part will, from the outset, b e very considerably restricted in comparison with present-day society a n d i t dirriinishes in proportion as the new society develops .
Secondly, that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc . From the outset this part grows considerably in comparison with present-day society and it grows in proportion as the new society develop s .
Thirdly, funds for those unable t o work, etc . , in short, for what i s included under so-cal led official poor relief today. Only now do we come to the " d istribution" which the pro gra m m e , under Lassallean influence, alone has in view in its narrow fashipn, namely, to that part of the means of consumption which is divided among the individual producers o f the co-operative s o ciety. The "undiminished proceeds o f labour" have already unnoticeably become converte d into the "diminished" proceeds, although what the producer is deprived o f in his capacity as a private individual benefits him directly or indirectly in his capacity as a member of society, J u s t as the phrase o f the " u ndiminished proceeds of labour" has disappeared, so now does t h e phrase o f t h e "proceeds o f labour" dis appear altogethe r . Within t h e co-operative society b a s e d on common ownership of the means o f production, the producers do not exchange their prod ucts; j ust as little does the labour employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labou r no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of the total l abour. The phrase " proceeds of labour," objection able also today on account o f its ambiguity, thus loses all meanin I \Vhat
we
hav.e to deal with here is
a
\
L ., communist society, n o t as it
has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, j ust as it e merges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth
1
1
/
marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges, Accordingly, .
/'� " -""""" \
I 530 './ · R evolutionary Program and Strategy ' '-tl1e'' i � dividua l producer receives back from society-after the deduc
\\,
tions have been made-exactly what he gives to it. \Vhat he ha s given to it is his individual quantum of labour. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual h ours of work; the individual labour time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by h i m , his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that h e has furnished s u ch and such a n a mount of labour ( a fter deducting his labour for th e common funds ) , a n d with this certificate he draws from the socia l stack of means of consu P tion as much as costs the same amoun t of labour. The same am at: nt of labour which he has given to societ y in one 'form he receives b ck i n another. ........ - , Here obviously the principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values . Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labour, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals except individual means of consumption . But, as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is con cerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents : (� given a mount of labour in one form is exchanged for . a n equal amoimt of labour in another form ) Hence, equal right here is still in pri�ciple-bourgeo is righ t although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange only exists on the average and not in the individua l cas e . In spite of this advance, this equal righ t i s still constantly stigma tised by a bourgeois limitation . The right of the producers is propor tional to the labour they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurcment is made with an equal standard, labour. But one man is superior to another phYSIcally or mentally and so supplies morc labour in the same time, or can labour for a longer time; and labour, to serve as a measure, m ust be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of mea surement is equal right is an unequal right for unequal labour. It recognises no class differences, because everyone is on l y a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognises unequal individual endowment and thus productive capacity as natural privileges . It is, therefore,�-9.t ineg!!'c.!!i!J!..jn its content, like every rigfitp Right by its very nature can consist only in the application of a n equal standard; but unequal individuals ( an d they would not be different individuals if they were not unequa l ) are measurable only by an equal standard in so far as' they are brought unde r a n equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only, for instance, in the pres ent case, are regardcd only as workers and noth ing more is seen in .
"
I
;1 (
J
sarie
,
�
Critique of the Gotha Program
(
53 1 ,)
'-' them, everything being ignored . Further, one worker is ma'�fled;" another not; one h a s more children than another, and so on and s o forth . Thus, with . a n equal performance o f labou r, and hence a n equal share in t h e social consumption fund, o n e will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on . To avoid all these defects, right instead of being equal would have to be unequal. ... . .. B u t these defects are . inevitable in the first phase of commuoisf" ' ' ' . society as it is when it h juste'merge'cr afi:ei pi616ii'ge(rbi'rth p;ngs from capitalist society . 'R ig�t_ ca!:_ ne.�:er be_ hi� � J]_.!he_.�_�? nomic s tmcture of society and its cultural development conruHoned .. . . -----. . . .. . . .. thereoy. .
of communist society, after the enslaving subor dination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith .e tithesis between mentaLa.lliL.Jili"y.� cal labouEz._b.as . .van also th.e...n after la bour nqLQnly a IIl�a:Ils:-:-9rlrfe . but life's forces have also increased with the pr e want; after all-rOUiRT 'developmel1t of the il1diviau�!l...�..d.. �a11. tb� �p!.il1gs of co operative' weatfl11fo w then can the iiart6w h orizou 'O'f-bOlrrge15'ls"' dgnf 'be crossed in its entirety and society i b his . ability, to r :.�: _ �£�£ .(EIlK . �.? o is I naveo-eat'nnore--arlei'igfh with the "undiminished proceeds of labour," on the one h and, and with "equal right" and "fair distribu tion," on the other, in order to show what a crime it is to attempt, on the one hand, to force on our Party again, as dogmas, ideas which in a certain period had some meaning but have now become obsolete verbal rubbish, while again p erverting, on the other, the realistic outlook, which it cost so m uch effort to instil into the Party but which has now taken root in it, by means of ideological non· sense about right and other trash so common among the democrats and French Socialists . Quite apart from the analysis so far given, it was in general a mis� take to make a fuss about so-called distribution and put the princi pal stress on it. Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the m ode o f production itsel f. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of produc tion are in the hands of non-workers i n the form of property in cap� ital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal con dition of production, of labour power . I f the elements of production are s o distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. I f the material conditions of pro-
ish.e-Ei.. iT
ha?_Q��9.m� t��d.���.��v�. .
.
..
-moreaouMai1tly-ol1ly
����:��;� � ����:; f.l��
.
..
h
.
..
eac�_.l)
532
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
duction are the ' co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the mea ns of consump
tion different from the present one. Vulgar s ocialism ( and from it in turn a section of the democracy ) has taken over from the bour
geois economists the consideratlt'lY1 and trea tment of distribution as i ndependent of the mode of production a n d hence the presentation of socialism as turning principal l y on distribution. After the real relation has long been made clear, why retrogress again?
!
<:
4 · U he eman ipatio n of l a bour must be the work o f the worki ng class, relati vely to which all other classe s are only one reacti onary mass '
:
The first strophe is taken from the introductory words of the Rules of the International, but " improved . " There it is sai d : "The
emancipation of the working class must be the act of the workers
themselves"; h ere, on the contrary, the "working class" has to ema ncipate-what? "Labour." Let h im understand who can.
In compensa tion, the antistrophe, on the other hand, is a Lassal
lean quotation of the first water : "rela tively to which ( th e working class ) all other classes are only one reactionary mass."
In the Communist Manifesto it is said : "Of all the clas ses that
stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat a lone
is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and fi nally dis appear in the face of modem industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product."
The bourgeoisie is here conceived as
a
revolutionary class-as the
bearer of large-sca le i ndustry-relatively to the feuda l l ords and the lower middle class, who desire to maintain all socia l positions that
are the creation of obsolete modes of production . Thus they do n ot
form together with the bourgeoisie only one reactionary mass . On the other hand, the proletariat is revolutionary rela tively to
the bourgeoisie because, having itself grown up on the basis of
large-scale i ndustry, it strives to strip off from production the capi
talist character that the bourgeoisie seeks to perpetuate . But the Manifesto adds that the "lower middle class" is becoming revolu tionary " in view of [its] impending tran sfer into the proletariat. "
From this point of view, therefore, it is again nonsense to say
that it, together with the bourgeoisie, and with the feuda l lords into
the bargain, " form only one reactionary mass" relatively to the work
ing class . Has one proclaimed to the artisa ns, smal l manufacturers, etc . ,
a n d peasants during the last election s : Relatively to u s you, together
with the bourgeoisie and feudal lords, form only one reactionary
mass?
Lassalle knew the Communist Manifesto by heart, as h i s fa ithful
Critiq ue of the Gotha Program
5 33
followers know the gospels written by him . I f, therefore, he has fal sified it so grossly, this has occurred only to put a good colour on his alliance with absolutist and feudal opponents against the bour geoisie . In the above paragraph, moreover, his oracular saying is dragged in by main force with out any connection with the botched quota tion from the Rules of the Internationa l . Thus is it here simply an impertinence, and indeed not at all displeasing to Herr Bismarck, one of those cheap pieces of insolence in which the Marat of Berlin1 deal s . 5 . "The working class strives for i t s emancipation first o f all within
framework of the present·day national state,
conscious that the necess ar y
the
reo
suIt of its efforts, which are co m mo n to the workers o f all civilised coun·
tries, will be the international brotherhood o f peoples . "
Lassalle, i n opposition to t h e Communist Manifesto a n d to all earlier socialism, conceived the workers' movement from the nar rowest national standpoint H e is being followed in this-and that after the work o f the I n ternational ! It is altogether self-evident that, to be able to fight at all, the working class must organise itself at h ome as a class and that its own country is the immediate arena of its struggle . I n s o far its class struggle is national, not in 's ubstance, but, a s the Communist Mani festo says, "in form . " B u t the "framework of the present-day national state , " for instance, the German E mpire, is itself in its turn economically "within the f ramework" of the world market, politically "within the framework" of the system of states . Every businessman knows that German trade is at the same time foreign trade, and the greatness of Herr Bismarck consists, to be sure, precisely i n his pursuing a kind of international policy . And to what does the German workers' party reduce its in terna tionalism? To the consciousness that the result of its efforts will be "the international brotherhood of peoples"-a phrase borrowed from the bourgeois League of Peace and Freedom2 which is intended to pass as equivalent to the international brotherhood of the working classes in the joint struggle against the ruling classes and their gov ernments. Not a word, there fore, about the international functions of the German working class! And it is thus that it is to challenge its own bourg.eoisie-which is already linked up in brotherhood against- i t with the bourgeois of all other countries-and Herr Bis marck's international policy of conspiracy! I n fact, the internationalism o f the programme stands even I . A reference to Hasselmann, the chief editor o f the IV euer Sozial-Demokrat, the central organ of t h e Lassalleans.
2 . The International League o f Peace and Freedom was organized i n Geneva in 186 7 by liberals and pacifists.
5 34
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
infinitely below that of the Free Trade Party. The latter also asserts that the result of its efforts will be " the international brotherhood
of peoples. " But it also does something to make trade international and by no means contents itself with the consciousness-that all
peoples are carrying on trade at home. The international activity of the working classes does not in any way depend on the existence of the International Working Men's
Association . This was only the first attempt to create a central
organ for that activity; an attempt w hich was a lasting success on account of the impulse which i t gave but whic h was n o longer
realisable in its first historical form after the fall of the Paris C ommune. Bismarck's Norddeutsche was absolutely right when it announced,
to the satisfaction of its master, that the German workers' party had sworn off internationalism in the new programme.3
II "Starting from t hese basic principles, the German workers' party strives by all legal means for the free state.....c..a nd-socialist society : the abolition of t h e wage system together with t h e iron law of wages-a nd-exploitation in every form; the elimination of all social a n d political ineq uality."
I shall return to the "free" state later.
So, in fut ure, the German workers' party has got to believe in Lassalle's " iron law of wages" ! That this may not be lost, the non
sense is perpetrated of speaking of the "abo lition of the wage sys tem" ( it should read : system of wage l ab our ) " to g ether with the iron law of wages. " If I abolish wage labour, then naturally I
abolish its laws also, whether they are of " iron" or sponge . But Lassal le�s attack on wage labour turns a lmost solely on this so-cal led
law. In order, therefore, to prove that Lassal le's sect has conquered, the "wage system" must be abolished "together with the iron law of wages" and not without it.
I t is well known that noth ing of the " iron law of wages" is
Lassal le's except the word "iron " borrowed from G oethe's "great eterna l iron laws . " The word iron is a label by which the true be
lievers recognise one another. But if I take the law with Lassalle's
stamp on it and, consequently, in his sense, then I must also take it with his substantiation for i t. And w hat is that? As Lange already showed, shortly after Lassalle's death, it is the Mal thusian theory
of population ( preached by Lange h imself ) . But if this theory i s 3 . M a r x refers t o appeared in No.
t h e editorial 6 7 o f the
which
Nord deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung eN orth German General Newspaper) of March 2 0 , 1 8 7 5 . I t s t a t e d w i t h regard
' to A r ticle 5 o f the Social-Democratic Programme that " Social-Democratic agitation had in many respects hecome m o r e prudent" a n d that it was "repu d i a t ing the Internationa l . "
Critique of the Gotha Pro gram
535
correct, then again I cannot abolish the law even if I abolish wage labour a hundred times over, because the law then governs not only the system of wage labour but every social system . Basing them selves directly on this, th e economists have been proving for fifty years and more that socialism cannot abolish poverty, which has its basis in nature, but can only make it general, distribute it simul taneously over the whole surface of society ! B u t all this i s not t h e m a i n thing. Quite apart from the false Lassallean formulation of the law, the truly outrageous retrogres sion consists in the following. S ince Lassalle's death there has asserted itself in our Party the scientific understanding that wages are not what they appear to be, namely, the value, or price, of labour, but only a masked form for the value, or price, of labour power. Thereby the whole bourgeois conception o f wages hitherto, as well as all the criticism hitherto directed against this conception, was thrown overboard once for all and it was made clear that the wage-worker has permission t o work for his own subsisten ce, that is, to live, only in so far as he works for a certain time gratis for the capitalist ( and hence also for the lat ter's co-consumers of surplus value ) ; that the whole capitalist system of production turns on the increase of this gratis labour by extending the working day or by developing the productivity, that is, increasing the intensity of labour power, etc; that, consequently, the system of wage labour is a system of slavery, and indeed of a slavery which becomes more severe in proportion as the social pro ductive forces of labour develop, whether the worker receives better or worse payment. And after this understanding has gained more and more ground i n our Party, one returns to Lassalle's dogmas, although one must have known that Lassalle did not know what wages were, but following in the wake of the bourgeois economists took the appearance for the' essence of the matter . It is as if, among slaves who have at last got behind the secret of slavery and broken out in reb ellion, a slave still in thrall to obsolete notions were to inscribe on the programme of the rebellion : Slavery must be abolished because the feeding of slaves in the system' of ' slavery cannot exceed a certain l o w maximum ! Does not the mere fact that the representatives of our Party were capable of perpetrating such a monstrous attack on the understand ing that has spread among the mass of our Party prove by itself with what criminal levity and with what lack of conscience they set ' to work in drawing up this compromise programme! Instead of the indefinite concluding phrase of the paragraph, " the elimination of all social and political inequality," it ought t o have been said that with the abolition of class distinctions all social and political inequality arising from them would disappear of itself.
536
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
III "The German workers' party, i n order t o pave the way to the solution of
the social question, demands the establishment of producers' co-operative societies with state aid under the demo cratic control of the toiling people_ The producers' co-operative societies a r e to be called into being for indus try and agriculture on such a scale that the socialist organisation of the
total labour will arise fro m them_"
A fter the Lassallean " iron law o f wages,"
the physic o f the
proph e t . The way to i t i s "paved" in worthy fash i on . In place o f the existing class struggle appears a newspaper scribbler's phra s e : " the social question," to the "solution" of which one "paves the way." I n stead of arising from the revolutionary process of transforma t ion of society, the "socialist organisation of the total labour" " a rises" from the "state a i d " that the state gives to the producers' co-opera tive societies and wh ich the state, not th e worker, "calls into
being." It is worthy o f La ssa l l e's imagination that with state loans o n e can build a new society just as well as a new railway! From the remnants of a sense o f shame, "state aid" has b ee n put -under the democratic control of the " toiling peopl e . " I n t h e first place, t h e ma jority of t h e "toiling people" i n Ger many consists of peasants, a n d not of proletarian s . Secondly, "democratic" means i n German "volksherrschaftlich" ["by the rule o f the people"] . B u t what does "con trol by the rule of the people o f the toiling people" mean? And particularly in the case o f a toiling people which, through these demands that it puts to the state, ex presses its full consciousness that it neither rules nor is ripe for ruling! It would be superfluous t o deal here with the criticism of the recipe prescribed by Buchez in the reign of Louis Philippe in opposi
tion to the French Socialists and accepted by the reactionary work ers
of the A telier.4 The
chief
offence
does
not
lie
in
having
inscribed this specific nostrum i n the programme, but in taking, in general, a retrograde step from the standpoint of a class movement to that of a sectarian movemen t . T h a t t h e workers desire t o establish t h e conditions f o r co-opera tive production on a s o cial scale, and first of all on a national scale i n their own country, only means that they are working t o revol u tionise the present c o n d itions of production, and i t ha s n othing in c o m m o n with the foundation of co-operative societies with state a i d . B u t a s far a s the present co-operative societies a re concerned, they are of v a l u e only in so far as they are the independent crea4. A telier
montl1ly
(Workshop) : w h i c h appeared
A in
workers' Paris in
1 8 40-50. It was under the influence of t h e Catholic socialism o f B u chez.
Critique of t he Gotha Program
' .
537
tions of the workers and not proteges either of the government or of the bo ur geois .
IV I come now to the democratic section. A
' 'The free basis of the state."
First of all, according to II , the German workers' party strives for " the free state ." Free state-what is this? I t is by no means the aim of the workers, who have got rid o f the narrow mentality of humble subjects, to set the state free . In the German Empire the "state" is almost a s "-free" as in Russia . Free dom consists in converting the state from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it, and today, too, the forms o f state are m ore free or less free to the extent that they restrict the "freedom of the state . " The German workers' party-at least if it adopts the programme -shows that i ts socialist ideas are not even skin-deep; in that, in stead of treating existing society ( and this holds good for any future one ) as the basis of the existing state ( or of the future state in the case of future society ) , i t treats the state rather as independ en t entity that possesses its own intellectual, ethical and libertarian
bases.
And what of the riotous misuse which the programme makes of the words "present-day state," "present-day society," and of the still m ore riotous misconception it creates in regard to the state to which it addresses its demands? "Present-day society" is capitalist society , which exists in all civi lised countries, more or less free from medieval admixture, more or less modified by the special histo rical development of each country, more or less developed . On the other hand, the "present-day state" changes with a country's frontier. It is different i n the Prusso-Ger- . man Empire from what it is in Switzerland, it is different in Eng land from what it is in the U n i ted States. The "present-day state" is, therefore, a fiction . Nevertheless, the different states of the different civilised coun tries, in spite of their manifold diversity of form, all have this in common, that they are based on m odern bourgeois society only one more or less capitalistically developed . They have, therefore, also certain essential features in commo n . I n this sense it is possible t o speak of the "present-day state," i n contrast with the future, in which its present root, bourgeois society, will have died off ,
.
53 8
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
The question then arises :
what transformation will
the state
undergo i n comm un i st society? I n other words, what social func tions will remain in existence th ere that are analogous to present functions o f the state? This qu estion can only be answered scientifi cally, and one does not get a flea-hop nearer to the problem by a thousandfold combination of the word people with the word s t a t e . r
-
Between capitalist a n d communist s o c i e t y lies t h e p e r i o d of the revolutionary transformation o f t h e one into the o th e r . There corre sponds to this also a political transition period in which the state
1 can be nothing but e....
the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
Now the programme does not deal with this nor with the future
� state of com m u n i s t societ y .
,
i
l ts politica l demands contain n othing beyond the o l d demo cratic litany familiar to all : universal suffrage, direct legislation, pop ular rights, a people 's militia, etc. They are a mere ech c,..tf the bour
geois People's Party, of the League of Peace a n d Freedom . They are all demands which, i n so far a s they are not exaggerated i n fantastic presentation, have already been they
belong
does
not
realised. Only the state t o which
l i e within
the borders
of
the
German
Empire, b u t in Switzerland, the U n ited S tates, etc. This sort o f " s tate o f t h e future" is a present-day state, although existing outside t h e "framework" o f the German Empire . B u t one thing has been forgotten. Since the German workers ' party expressly decla res that it acts within " th e present-day national state," hence within
its own state, the Prusso-German E mp i re-its
d em a n d s would indeed otherwise be l a rgely meaningless, s i nce one only d e m a n d s w h a t one has not got-it s h o u l d not have forgotten the chief thing, namely, that all those pretty little gewgaws rest on the recognition of the so-called sovereignty o f the people and hence a re appropriate only i n a
democratic republic.
Since one has not the cou rage-and wisely s o, for the circum stances demand caution-to demand the democratic republic, as the French workers' programmes under Louis Philippe a n d under Louis Napoleon did, o n e should n o t have resorted, either, to the subter fuge,
neither "h onest"5 nor decent, of demanding things which
have meaning only in a democratic republic from a state which is n othing but a police-guarded military despotism, embel lish ed with parliamentary forms, a l loyed with a feudal admixture, already influ enced by the bourgeoisie and bureaucratica lly carpentered, and th en to assure this state i n t o the bargain that one imagines one will be able to force such things upon it "by legal means . " Even vulgar democracy, which sees the m i l l ennium i n the demo cratic republic a n d h a s no suspicion that it is precisely i n this l a s t form o f state o f bourgeois society t h a t t h e class struggle h a s to be s. "Honest" was the epithet applied to the Eisenachers. Here
a
play upon words.
Critique of the Gotha Program
539
fought out to a conclusion-even i t towers mountains above this kind of democratism which keeps within the limits of what is per mitted by the police and not permitted by logic. That, in fact, by the word " state" is meant the government machine, or the state in so far as i t forms a special organism sepa rated from society through division of labour, is shown by the words "the German worker's party demands as the economic basis of the state : a single progressive income tax," etc. Taxes are the econom ic basis of the government machinery and o f nothing else . In the state o f the future, existing in Switzerland, this dema nd has b een pretty well fulfilled. Income tax presupposes various sources of income of the various social classes, and hence capitalist society . It is, therefore, nothing remarkable that the Liverpool financial reformers, bourgeois headed by Gladstone's brother, are putting forward the same demand as the programme. B. "The German workers' party demands as the intellectual a n d ethical basis of the state : "1 .
Universal and equal elementary education by the state. Universal
compulsory school a ttendance. Free i nstruction ."
Equal elementary education? \\!hat idea lies behind these words? Is it believed that in present-day society ( and it is only with this one has to deal ) education can be equal for all classes? Or is it demanded that the upper classes also shall be compulsorily reduced to the modicum o f education-the elementary school-that alone is compatible with the economic conditions not only of the wage workers but of the peasants as well? "Un iversal compulsory school attendance . Free instruction . " The former exists even in Germany, the second in Switzerland and in the United States in the case of elementary s chool s . If in some states of the latter country higher educational institutions are also "free" that only means in fact defraying the cost o f the education of the upper classes from the general tax receipts. Incidentally, the same holds good for "free administration o f j ustice" demanded under A, 5. The administration of criminal justi ce i s to be had free everywhere; that of civil j ustice i s concerned almost exclusively with con flicts over property and hence affects almost exclusively the pos sessing classes . Are they to carry o n their litigation at the expense of the national coffers? The paragraph on the sch ools should a t least have demanded technical schools ( theoretical and practical ) in combination with the elementary school . "Elementary education by the state" is altogether objectionable. Defining by a general law the expenditures on the elementary schools, the qualifications o f the teaching staff, the branches of instruction, etc . , and, as is done in the United States, supervising
540
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
the fulfilment of these legal specifications by state inspectors, is a very different thing from appointing the state as the educator of the people! Government and Church should rath er be equally ex cluded from any influence on the school . Particu larly, indeed, in the Prusso-German Empire (and one should n ot take refuge in the rotten subterfuge that one is speaking of a "state of the future"; we have seen how matters stand in this respect) the state has need, on the contrary, of a very stern education by the peopl e. But the whole programme, for all its democratic clang, is tainted through and through by the Lassallean sect's servile belief in the state, or, what is no better, by a democratic belief in miracles, or rather it is a compromise between these two kinds o f belief in miracles, both equally remote from socialism . "Freedom of science" says a paragraph of the Prussian tio n. \Vhy, then, here?
..,S9nstitu
"Freedom of conscience"! If turkampf6 to remind liberalism
one desired at this time of the Kul of its old catchwords, it surely could have been d one only in the following form: Everyone should be able to attend to his religious as well as his bodily nee ds without the police sticking their noses in. But the workers' party ought at any rate in t his connection to have expressed its awareness of the fac't that bourgeois "freedom o f conscience" is nothing but the toleration o f all possible kinds o f religious freedom of conscience, and that for its part it endeavours rather to liberate the conscience from the witchery of religion . But one chooses not to transgress the "bourgeois" level . I have now come to the end, for the appendix that now follows in the programme does not constitute a characteristic component part of it. Hence I can be very brief here. 2,
"Normal working day,"
In no other country has the workers' party limited itself to such an ind efinite demand, but has always fixed the length of the work ing day that it considers normal under the given circumstances . 3, "Restriction of female labour and prohibition of child labour,"
The standardisation of t h e working day must include t h e restric tion of female labour, in so far as it relates to the duration, inter missions, etc., of the working day; otherwise it could only mean the exclusion o f female labour from branches of industry that are espe cially unhealthy for the female body or are objectionable morally for the female sex. I f that is what was meant, it should have been said so. 6. Kulturkampf ( Struggle for culture ) : Bismarck's struggle in the seventies against the German Catholic Party, the
Party of the "Centre," by means police persecution of Catholicism,
of
Critique of the Gotha Program
"Prohibition of child labour."
541.
Here i t was absolutely essential to
state the age limit.
A general prohibition of child labour is incompatible with the existence of large-scale industry and hence an empty, pious wish . Its realisation-if it were possi b le-would be reactionary, since, with a strict regulation of the working time according to the different age groups and other safety measures for the protection of children, an early combination of productive labour with education is one of the m ost potent m eans for the transformation of present-day society. 4. "State supervision of factory, workshop and domestic industry."
In consideration of the Prusso-German state it should definitely have been demanded that the inspectors are to be removable only by
a
court of law; that any worker can have them prosecuted for
neglect of duty; that they must belong to th e medical profession. ;. "Regulahon of prison labour."
A petty demand in a general workers' programme. In any case, i t should have been c1early stated t h a t there i s no intention from fear of competition to allow ordinary criminals to be treated like beasts:: a n d especially that there is no desire to deprive them of their sol� means of betterment, productive labour. This was surely the least one might have exp ected from Socialists . 6. "An effective liability law."
It should have been stated what is m eant by an "effective" liabil ity law. Be it noted, incidentally, that in speaking of the normal working day the part of factory legislation that deals with health regulations and safety m easures, etc., has been overlooked. The liability law only comes into operation when these regula tions are infringed. In short, this appendix also is distinguished by slovenly editing.
Dixi et salvavi animam meam.7 7. "I have spoken and saved
my soul."
After the Revolution: Marx Debates Bakunin KARL MARX After Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the Russian revolutionary Mikhail Baku nin was perhaps the most influential representative of the anarchist current in nineteenth-century socialism. His theoretical tract Statehood and Anarchy was published in
1873
and became a programmatic document. Ba� was
then both a sharp critic of Marx and a rival in working-class movements . . Marx read and prepared a conspectus of Bakunin's book in
1874-75,
including in it the lengthy passages of rebuttal of Bakunin's criticism that are presented here (the indented material consists of passages t hat Marx
�ents
copied o ut in the conspectus, parenthetically).
Because
often interspersing his own ironic comMarx and Engels said rather little about
.' the specifics of the predicted "dictatorship of the proletariat" and ow
a bout
they envisaged developments in the aftermath of the proletarian revo
lution, Marx's comments in this obscure source are of great interest. The
in the journal Letopisi marksizma (Annals of 1926. It appears in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, \Verke, 18 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1962), pp. 599-642. This English transla
conspectus was first published Marxism) in Vol�
tion is by Robert C. Tucker.
'" '" '" \Ve have already expressed our deep aversion to the theory of Marx and Lassalle that recommends to the workers, if not as an ultimate ideal then at any rate as the imm ediate ma in aim, the founding of a people's state which, as they explain it, will be nothing other than the proletariat "organized as the ruling class." The question arises, if the proletariat is ruling, over whom will it rule? Th is means that there will remain anoth er proletariat which w i l l be subordinated to this new domination, this new state.1 This means that so long as other classes continue to exist, the capita l ist class i n particular, the proletariat fights i t (for with the 1 . The term "people's state" was not Marx's but, as he indicates further on, one put into currency. by the prominent German Social Democrat Wilhelm Lieb knecht and later picked up by Ferdinand
542
Lassalle_ The phrase "organized as the ruling class" appears in the C om
munist Manifesto (see above, [R. T.]
p.
490).
After the Revolution
543
coming of the proletariat to power, its enemies will not yet have dis appeared, the old organization of society will not yet have disap. peared ), it must use measures of
force,
hence governmental meas
ures; if it itself still remains a class a n d the ec onomic conditions on which the class struggle and the existence of classes have not yet
fd isappeared, they must be forcibly removed or transformed,
and the
�rocess o f their transformation must be forcibly accelerated .
For example, the peasant rabble [das gemeine Bauernvolk, der which, as is well known, does not enjoy favor with the Marxists and which, being on a lower level of culture, will probably be governed by the urban and factory proleta riat.
Bauernrobe],
I t means th at where the peasant exists on a m a ss scale as a pri a more or less consider
vate land proprietor, where he even forms
able majority as in all the countries of the \Vest European conti. nent, where he has not disappeared and been replaced by agricul tural laborers, as in England-the following will take place: either the peasant will start to create obstacles and bring about the fall of any worker revolution, as he has done heretofore in France, or else the proletariat (for the peasant proprietor does not belong to the proletariat; even when his situation places him in it he thinks that he doesn't belong to i t) must, as the government, take steps as a result of which the situation of the peasant will directly improve and which will therefore bring him over to the s ide of the revolution; steps which embryonically facilitate the transition from private own ership of the land to collective ownership, so that the peasant will himself come to this by economic means; but there should be n o stunning of the peasant by, f o r example, proclaiming the abrogation of the right of inheritance or of h is property; that is possible only where ,the capitalist
rentier
has squeezed the peasant out and the
real tiller of the soil has become just as much a proletarian as the h i red worker, as the urban worker, and hence has the same interests not indirectly but
directly;
still less should parcelled.ou.t property be
strengthened by increasing the parcels through outright turning over of big estates to the peasants, as in the Bakuninist approach to revo l utio n . Or, i f one looks a t this question from a national point of view, we may suppose that for the Germans, the Slavs for the same reason will enter into the same slavish subordination to the victo rious German proletariat as the latter will now enjoy with respect to its own bourgeoisie. Schoolboy drivel! A radical social revolution is connected with certain h istorical conditions of economic development; the latter are
5 44
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
its p resuppositi on. Therefore it is possible only where the industrial proletariat, together with capitalist prod uction, occupies at least a substantial place in the mass of the people. And in order for it to have any chance at all of being victorious, it must be capable,
muta
tis mutandis,
of d oing at least as much directly for the peasant as " the French bourgeoisie did during its revolution for the French peasant of that ti me. A fine idea, that the rule of the worker �. ' inclu�es the enslavement of agricultural labor! B u t here appears the innermost thought of Herr B akunin . He understands absolutely nothing about
social
revolution; all he knows are its political
phrases. For h im its economic requisites do not exist. Since all h i th erto existing economic formations, developed or undeveloped, have included the enslavement of the working p erson (whether in the form of the w age worker, the peasant, etc .), he thinks that a radical revolution is possible under all these formations. Not only tha � wants a European social revol ution, resting on the economi c foun dation of capitalist production, to take place on the level of the Russian or Slavic agricultural and pastoral peoples and not to over
navigation creates a differ navigation, for that is a differ \Vill power and n o t economic con
step that level; although he does see that ence between the brothers, but only
ence all politicians know about! ditions is the basis of his social revolu tion. If
there
exists a s tate, there is inevitably domination hence also slavery; domina tion i s unthinkable with o u t open or concealed slavery, that's why we're enem ies of the state. \Vhat does it mean for the proletariat to be "organized as the ruling class"?
[HeTTschaft],
It means that the proletariat, i nstead of fighting against the eco nomically privileged classes in each individual instance, has ac quired sufficient power and organization to use the general mea ns of coerc i on against them; however, it can use only such economic means as abolish its own character as wage worker, hence a s a class; so its complete victory coincides with the end of its dominati on , for its class character comes to an end. C an i t really be that the entire proletariat will s t and a t t he head of the administration? Can i t really be that in a trade union, for example, the entire union forms its executive commi ttee? Can i t be that there will dis appear from the factory all division of labor and difference of func tions stemming from it? And in the Bakuninist arrangement "from bottom to top," will everyone be at the " top"? In that case there will be n o "bottom." \Vill all the members of the township in
!
After the Revolution
545
equal measure supervise the general affairs of the "district"? In that event there will be no distinction between township a n d district. There are about forty million Germans. \Vill all forty millions really be members of the government? Certainly, because the thing starts with self-gov ernmen t of the
township.
The entire nation will be govern ors and there will be no govern ed o nes. \Vhen a person g overns himself, then he doesn ' t-on this princi ple-govern himself; after all, he's only he himself and nobody els e. Then there will be no government, no state, but if there is a state, there will be governors a n d slaves. This means only: when class domina tion ends there will be no ' state in the present politica l sense of the word. This dilemma has a simple solution in the Marxists' theory. By popular administration they [that is, Bakunin] understa nd administration of the people by means of a small number of rep resentatives elected by the people. Th e ass! This is democratic nonsense, political windbaggery! Elections are a political form, even in the smallest Russian town ship and arteZ.2 The character of elections depends not on these designations but o n the economic foundations, on the economic ties of the voters amongst one another, and from the moment these functions cease being political (1) no governmental functions any longer exist; (2) the distribution of general functions takes on a business character and involves no domination;
(3)
elections com
pletely lose their present political character. The univers al right of election of people' s represe ntatives a n d rulers o f the state by the whole people-such a thing as a whole people in the present sense of the word is a fantasythis is the Marxists' final word, as it is of the democratic school, a lie w hich covers up a despotism of a governing minorit y, all the more dangerous in that it is an expression of a supposed people's will. 2. A cooperative association in agriculture or handicrafts.
546
Revolutionary Progr am and Strategy
ip the so-called people's will disappears Under collective ownersh · to make way for the real will of the cooperative. So, in sum: government of the great majority of popuiar masses by a privileged minority. But this minority will be composed of workers, say the Marxists. \Vhere do they say that? Of former workers, perhaps, but just as soon as they become rep_ resentatives or rulers of the people they will cease to be workers. t nowadays No more than a factory-owner ceases to be a capitalis . council because he has become a member of the town And they'll start looking down on all ordinary workers fr the heights of the state: they will now represent not the people but themselves and their claims to govern the people. He who doubts this simply doesn't know human nature.
oi
If Herr Bakunin knew even one thing about the situation of the
manager of a workers' cooperative factory, all his hallucinations about domination would go to the devil. He would have to ask him self what form the functions of administration can assume on the basis of such a worker state, if it pleases him to call it that. But these chosen ones will be ardent in their conviction, and learned socialists too. The words constantly being used in the works and speeches of the Lassalleans and �larxists ... -the words "learned socialism," never used before, and "scientific
socialism," used only in opposition to utopian socialism, which tries
to impose new hallucinations and illusions on the people instead of confining the scope of its knowledge to the study of the social movement of the people itself; see my book against Proudhon-
noth by themselves prove that the so:called 'p�ople'.s state will be of masses the f tratIon admmls ? ing other than the quite despotIc f re�l acy anstocr rous non-num � very and new a by � people the d, so It Will and supposed learned ones. The people I.S not learn� ate IDcorpor wholly g, go\'ermn of cares the be entirely freed from . ts sense thiS into the governed herd. A fine liberation! The. MarXis of the learned [!] contradiction and, realizing that the re�lme an slve, offen most es , har �ost . con the , ] reverie! � [ quelle . ID spite of shlp dlctato : temptuous in the world Will m fact be a thought the With lves themse console forms, all the democratic t-lived. that the dictatorship will be t�mporary and shor
?
?
�
After the Revolution
Non, mon cherI-
The
class domination
547
of the workers over the
resisting strata of the old world must last until the economic foun dations o f the existence of classes are destroyed. They say that their only care and aim will be to shape and ele vate the people [cafe politicians!] both economically and politi cally to suc h a degree that all government will soon be su per fluous and the state, having lost all political, i.e., domi nating, character, will all by itself turn into a free organization of eco nomic interests and commu nes. If their state is going to be really a people's one, why should it abolish itself, but if its aboliton is necessary for the real liberation of the people, how can they dare to call it a people's state? Leaving aside the attempt to ride on Liebknecht's which in general is nonsense aimed against the
festo
people'S state, Communist Mani
and so on, this only means: in view of the fact that during the
time of struggle to destroy the ol d society the proletariat still acts on the foundation of the old society and therefore still gives its movement political forms that more or less belong to the old society, in this time of struggle it has not yet attained its final orga nization and uses means for its liberation which will fall away after the liberation; from this Herr Bakunin deduces that it's best for the proletariat not to undertake any action but to sit a n d await-the day of general liquidation, the Last Judgment. By our polemic aga i nst them which, of course, appeared before my book against Proudhon a n d before the Communist Mani festo, even before Saint-Si mon: what a fine hysteron proteron3 we brought them to the realization that freedom or anarchy [Herr Bakunin h as, quite simply, translated Proudhon's and Stirner's4 anarchy i nto a savage Tartar dialect], i.e., the free organization of the worker masses from bottom to top [non sense!], is the final aim of social development and that any state, not excluding their people's one, is a yoke giving rise to despot. ism on the one hand and· slavery on the other. They say that such a state yoke, a dictatorship, is a necessary tra nsitional means for attai ning the most· complete popular liberation. So, to liberate the masses of the people they first have to be enslaved. Our polemic rests and is founded on this contradiction. They main tain that only a dictatorship, their own naturally, can create the people's will; we answer: no dictatorship can have any other aim th a n to perpetuate itself, and i t can only give rise to and instill 3 . Reversal of the proper order. [R. T.] 4. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-65) and Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825)
were early French socialist thinkers. Max Stirner (1806-56) was a German anarchist philosopher. [R. T.)
548
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
slavery in the people that tolerates it; freedom can only be cre ated by freedom [Bakunin's permanent citoyen], i. e., by general insu rrection and the free organization of the ma sses from bottom to top. \Vhereas the politico-social theory of the anti-state sociaL ists, or anarchists, leads them steadily and directly to the fullest break with all governments, with all forms of bourgeois politics, �. leaving no other outcome but social revolution and leaving of socia l revolution nothing but the phrase, the contrary theory, the theory of the statist com m unists an� �ci entific authority j us t as steadily, under the pretext of pohtIcal tactics, draws a d entangles them into constant. "d�als" � ith governmen ts and various bourgeois political parhes, I.e., dnves them straight into reaction .
�
*
*
*
Circular Letter to Bebel, Liebknecht, Bracke, and Others KARL MARX
Movements in radical opposition to an existing order must often contend with voices within their midst that urge a toning down of the radical pro gram in the interests of piecemeal reform and collaboration with liberal ele ments who desire only gradual and partial change of the society. The Ger man socialist movement of the 1870'S was a case in point. In this circular letter to the Social Democratic Party leaders, Marx and Engels registered their strong protest against reformist voices within the movement. They still stood firm in their radical opposition to the existing order and their commitment to class struggle as the means of overthrowing it, and they wished the party to do likewise. The "three Zurichers" referred to in the letter were Hochberg, Bernstein, and Schramm; the article attacked by Marx
Jahrbuch fiir Sozialwis senschaft und Sozialpolitik (Annual for Social Sciences and Social Policy).
and Engels in the letter was published in the.
London, September 17-18, 1879
The Manifesto of the Three Zurichers In the meantime Hochberg's
Jahrbuch
has reached us, containing
an article, "The Socialist Movement in Germany in Retrospect," which, as Hochberg himself tells me, has been written by precisely the three members of the Zurich Commission. Here we have their authentic criticism of the movement up till now and with it their authentic programme for the line of the new organ in so far as this depends on them. Right at the beginning we read: "The movement, which Lassal1e regarded as an eminently politi cal one, to which h e summoned not only the workers but all honest
549
550
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
democrats, at the head of which were to march the independent representatives of science and all men imbued with true love of
, humanity,
was diminished under the presidency of Johann Baptist
Schweitzer to a
one-sided struggle of the industrial workers in their
own interests." I shall not exa mine whether or how f a r this is historically accur ate. The special reproach h ere levelled against Schweitzer is that he
diminished
Lassal leanism, which is here taken as a bourgeois-demo
cratic-philanthropic movement, to a one-sided struggle in the inter est of the industrial workers, by
deepening
its character as a class
struggle of the industrial workers against the bourgeois. He is fur ther reproached with having "rejected bourgeois democracy," \Vhat business has bourgeois democracy within the Social-Democra tic Party anyway? If it consists of "honest men" it cannot wish for ad mission, and if it does nevertheless wish to be admitted this can only be in order to sta rt a row. The La ssal lean party "chose to conduct itself in the most one sided way as a workers' party." The gentlemen who write that are themselves members of the party which conducts itself in the most one-sided way as a workers' party, they are at present invested with offices and dignities in this party. Here there is an absolute incom patibility. I f they mean what they write they must leave the party, or a t l east resign their offices and dignities. If they do not do so, they admit that they are proposing to utilise their official p osition in order to combat the proletarian character of the Party. Thus, if the Party leaves them their offices and dignities it will be betraying itself . In t h e opinion of these gentlemen, then, t h e Social-Democ ratic Party should not be a one-sided workers' party but an all-sided party of "al l men imbued with true love of huma nity." It must prove this above all by la ying aside coarse proletarian passions and placing itself under the guidance of educated, philanthropic bourgeois " in order to cultivate good ta ste" a nd "learn good form" (p. 8 5). Then the "disreputable behaviour" of some of the leaders will give way to a
thoroughly respectable "bourgeois behaviour." (As if the externally disreputable appearance o f those here referred to were not the least they can be reproached with!) Then, too, "numerous adherents from the circles of the educated and propertied classes will make
their appearance. But these must first be won if the .. . agitation conducted is to attain tangible successes." German socialism has "attached too much importance to the winning of the masses and in so doing has neglected energetic [!] propaganda among the so cal led upper strata of society." For "the Party still lacks men fit to
represent it in the Reich stag." It is, however, "desirable and neces sary to entrust the ma ndates to men who have the time and oppor-
Letter to Bebel, Liebknecht, Bracke
551
tunity to make themselves thoroughly acquainted with the relevant material. The simple worker and small master craftsman . . . have necessary leisure for this only in rare and exceptional cases." So elect bourgeois! In short: the working class of itself is incapable of its own eman cipation. For this purpose it must place itsel f under the leadership of "ed ucated and propertied" bourgeois who alone possess the "time and opportunity" to acquaint themselves with what is good f o r the workers. And secondly, the bourgeoisie is on n o account to b e fought against but-to be won over by energetic propaganda. B u t if one wants to win over the upper strata o f society or onl y its well-disposed elem ents one must not frighten them on any account. A n d here the three Zurichers think they have made a reassuring dis covery: "Precisely at the present time, u nder the pressure of the Anti-So cialist Law, the Party i s showing that it is not inclined to p ursue the , path o f violent bloody revolution but is determined . .. to follow the path of legality, that is, of reform." So if the 500,000 to 600,000 Social-Democratic vot.ers-between a tenth and an eighth of the whole electorate and, besides, dispersed over the length and breadth of the land-have the sense not to run their heads against a wall and to attempt a "bloody revolution" of one against ten, this proves that they for ever renounce taking advantage of some tremendous external event, a sudden revolutionary upsurge arising from it or even a victory of the people gained in a conflict resulting from it. If Berlin should ever again be so uneducated as to have another March 181 the Social-Democrats, instead of taking part in the fight as "riff-raff with a mania for barricades" (p. 88) , must rather "follow the path of legality," put on the brakes, clear away the bar ricades and if necessary march with the glorious army against the one-sided, coarse,· uneducated masses. Or if the gentlemen assert that this is not what t hey meant, what then did th ey mean? But still better follows. "Hence, the more quiet, objective and deliberate it [the Party] is in its criticism of existing conditions and in its proposals to change them, the less possible wil l it be to repeat the present s u c cessf u l move [when the Anti-Socialist Law was introduced ] by which the conscious reactionaries intimidated the bourgeoisie by conjuring up the Red bogey" (p. 88). In order to relieve the bourgeoisie of the l ast trace of anxiety it must be clearly and convincingl y proved to it that the Red bogey is really only a bogey, and does not exist. B u t what is the secret of the Red bogey if not the bourgeoisie's dread of the inevitable life-and1.
This refers to the revolutionary barricade fighting in Berlin on March 18-19. 1848.
552
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
death struggle between it and the proleta riat? D read of the inevita ble ou tcome of the modern class struggle? Do away with the class struggle and the bourgeoisie and "all independent people" will "not be afraid to go hand in h and with the proletarians"! And t to be cheated would be precisely the proleta rians.
v es
Let the Party, therefore, prove by its humble and lowly manner that it has once and for all laid aside the "improprieties and excesses" which o ccasioned the Anti-Socia list Law. If it voluntarily promises tha t it only intends to act within the limits of this law, Bismarck and the bourgeoisie will surely have the kindness to repeal it, as it will then be superfluous! "Let no one misu nderstand us"; we do not want "to give up our Party and our programme, but think t h a t for years hence we shall have enough to do if we concentrate our whole strength and energy upon the attainment of certain i mmediate aims which m ust in any case be achieved before the rea lisation of the more far-reaching aspi ra tions can be thought of." Then those bou rgeois, petty bou rgeois and workers who are "a t p resent frightened away ... by our far reaching demands" will join us in ma sses. The programme is n ot to be given up but only
p o st p o ne d
-
fo r
an indefinite period. One accepts it, though not really for oneself and one's own lifetime but posthumously, as an heirloom to be handed down to one's children and grandchildren. In the meantime one devotes one's "whole strength and energy" to all sorts of petty rubbish and the patching up of the capitalist order of society in order a t lea st to produce the appea rance of someth ing happening without at the same time sca ring the bourgeoisie. There I m u s t really praise the "Com munist" Miquel, wh o proves his unshakable belief in the inevitable overthrow of capita list society in the course of the next few hundred yea rs by swindling for all he's worth, con tributing h i s honest best to the crash of 18i32 and so really doing something to help along the col l apse of the existing order. Another offence against good form was the "exaggerated attacks on the company promoters, " who were after all "only children of their
time";
it
would therefore
"have been better
to
abstain
. . . from abusing Strousberg and similar people." Unfortu nately everyone is only a "child of his time" and if this i s a sufficient excuse nobody ought ever to be attacked any more, a l l controversy, all struggle on our part ceases; we quietly accept all the kicks our adversaries give us because we, who are so wise, know that these adversaries are "only chi ldren of their time" and cannot act other wise. Instead of repaying their kicks with interest we ought rather to pity these unfortuna tes. of 1873 ended the so called "Grunder taumel" (the promot ing frenzy). a period of furious speccu-
2. The crash
lation and stock-exchange gambling which followed on the termination of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.
Letter t o Bebel, Liebknecht, Bracke
553
Then again the support of the Commune had the disadvantage, nevertheless, that "people who were otherwise well disposed to us were alienated and in general the hatred of the bourgeoisie against u s w a s increased ." Furthermore, the Party "is not wholly without blame for the passage of the October Law, s for it had increased the
hatred of the bourgeoisie
unnecessarily." There you have the programme of t h e three censors of Zurich . I n
clarity i t leaves nothing t o be desired. L e a s t o f a l l t o u s , who are very familiar with the whole of this phraseology from the 1848 days. I t is the representatives of the petty bourgeoisie w h o a r e here presenting themselves, full of anxiety that the proletariat, under the pressure of its revolutionary position, may "go too far. " Instead of determined political opposition, general mediation; instead of strug gle against the government and the bourgeoisie, an a ttempt to win over a n d persuade them; instead of defiant resistance to ill treat ment from above, humble submission and confession that the pun ishment was deserved. Historically necessary conflicts are all inter preted as misunderstandings, and all discussion ends with the assur ance that after all we are all agreed on the main point. The people who came out as bourgeois democrats in 1848 could just as well call themselves Social-Democrats now. To the former the democratic republic was a s unattai nably remote a s the overthrow of the capital ist system is to the l atter, and therefore is of absolutely no import ance in present-day politics; one can mediate, compromise and phi lanthropise to one's heart's content. It is just the same with the class struggle because its existence can no longer be denied, but in practice it is hushed up, diluted, attenuated, The Socia l-Democratic Party is not to be a workers' party, i s not to incur the odi um of the bourgeoisie or of anyone else; it should above all conduct energetic propaganda a mong the bourgeoisie; instea d of laying stress on far reaching aims which frighten away the bourgeoisie and after all are not a ttainable i n our generation, i t shoul d rather devote its whole s trength and energy to those petty-bourgeois patchwork reforms which, by providing the old order of society with new props, may perhaps transform the u ltimate catastrophe into a .gradual, piece meal and as far as possible peaceful process of dissolution . These are the same people who, ostensibly engaged in indefatigable activity, not only do nothing themselves but try to prevent anything happen ing at a l l except-chatter; the same people whose fea r of every form of action in 1848 and 1849 obstructed the movement at every step and finally brought about its downfall, the same people who never see reaction and are then q uite astonished to find themselves in the end in a blind alley w here neither resistance nor flight is possible, r sts, introduced by Bismarck in Octobe 3. Exceptional Law against the Sociali 1878.
554
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
.../
the same people who want to con fine history within their na
r�w
Philistine horizon and over whose heads history invaria bly pr oceed s to the order of the day.
As to their soc ia l ist convictions, this has been a deq u at ely criti cised already in the Manifesto, the chapter on "German, or 'True: Socialism." \Vhere the class struggle is pushed aside as a disagreea ble "coarse" phenomenon, nothing remains as a basis for socialism
but "true love of humanity" and empty p hraseolo gy about "jus t i ce ." I t is an inevitable p he n omenon, rooted in the course of deve lop ment, that people from what have hitherto been the ruling classes shoul d also join the militant proletariat and s upp l y it with educative
elements. \Ve clearly st a t ed this in the
Manifesto.
B u t here two
points are t o be noted:
First, in order to be of use to the pro letar ia n movement these people must b r in g real educative elements into it. But with the
great m a jori ty of the Ge rm an bo ur geois converts that is not the case. Neither the
Zukunft
nor the
Neue Gesellschaft4
h ave con
tributed anything which could advance the movement one step fur ther. Here t here is an absolute lack of real education material, whether factual or theoretical. In its p lace there are a tt em pts to bring su pe r ficia ll y mastered socialist ideas into har m on y with the exceedingly varied t heore tica l st an dp oin t s which these gentlemen
have br ou ght with them from the university or elsewhere and of which, o w i n g to the process of decompositi on which the remnants o f German p h i l osop h y are at presen t undergoing, one is more con
fused than the other. Instead of thoroughly studying the new sci ence themselves to begin with, each of them preferred to trim
it to fit the point of view he already had b rou ght along, m ade him self forthwith a private science of his own and at o nce came forward with the p re t en sion of wanting to te a ch i t. Hence, there are about as m any points o f view a m ong these gentry as there are heads; in
stead of prod uci ng cla r ity in a single case they have only produced desperate co nfusio n - fo rtu nate ly almost exclusively a mong them selves. Educative elements whose first principle is to teach what they
have not learnt can very well be d is pen se d with by the Party.
Secondly.
If people of this kind from other classes join the prole
tarian movement, the first condition must be that t hey should not
bring any remnants of bourgeois, pet ty - b our geo is, etc., pre j u d ices with them but should w h ole- hea rtedl y adopt the prole t a r ian out
look. B u t these gentlemen, as has been proved, are chock-full of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas. In such a petty-bourgeois coun4. Zukunft [Future] and Neue Gesellscha/t [New Society]: Social-reformist journals. The former appeared in Zu-
rich in 1877-80; in 1877-78.
the latter in Berlin
Letter to Bebel, Liebknecht, Bracke
555
try as Germany these ideas certai nly have their justification. But only outside the Social-Democratic \-Vorkers' Party. I f these gentle men cons titute themselves into a Social-Democratic petty-bourgeois party they have a perfect right to do so; one could then negotiate with them, form a bloc according to circumstances, etc. But in a workers' party they are an adulterating element. If reasons exist for tolerating them there for the m oment it is also duty only to tolerate them, to allow them no influence in the Party leadership a n d to rem ain aware that a break with them is only a matter of time. That time, moreover, seems to have com e. How the Party can tolerate the authors of thi s article in its midst any longer is incomprehen sible to us. B u t if even the leadership of the Party should fall more or less into the hands of such people, the Party would s i m ply be cas trated and there would be an end of proletarian snap. As for ourselves, in view of our whole past there is only one path open to us. For almost forty years we have stressed the class struggle as the immediate driving power of history and in particular the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat as the great lever of the modern social revolution; it is, therefore, i mpossible for us to co-operate with people who wish to expunge this class struggle from the movement. 'Vhen the International was formed we expressly formulated the battle cry: The emancipation of the working class m ust be the work of the working class itself. \Ve cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must first be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois. If the new Party organ adopts a line corresponding to the views of these gentlemen,
a line that is bourgeois
and
not proletarian, then
nothing remains for us, much though we should regret it, but pub l i cl y to declare our opposition to it, and to dissolve the solidarity with which we have hitherto represented the German Party abroad. But it is to be hoped t h a t things will not come to that pass .
The Tactics of Social Democrac y FRIEDRICH ENGELS
In
1895
Engels put out Marx's The Class Struggles in France,
1848-1850
as a separate pamphlet with a long Introduction, which proved to be his valedictory to the Social Democratic movement, as he died later that year. Surveying changes in the European scene over the more than forty years
since
Marx's
pamphlet
was
written,
Engels
hailed
the
steady
progress made by Social Democracy, particularly in Germany, through the electoral process. His endorsement of peaceful poii'tical tactics was further accentuated when, in March,
1895,
Vorwiirts, the centrtl organ
of the German Social Democratic Party, printed an abbreviated version of the Introduction featuring those portions of it which, as Engels complained in a private letter, could serve to "defend the tactics of peace at all costs and of the abhorrence of force .... " On April
1, 1895,
Engels wrote fur
ther to Karl Kautsky: " ... I see today i n the Vorwiirts a n extract from my Introduction, printed without my prior knowledge and trimmed fashion that I appear as a peaceful worshipper of legality quand
.
[} such a Ierne. So
much the more would I like the Introduction to appear unabridged in the Neue Zeit, so that this disgraceflll impression will be wiped out." Even in its unabridged form, however, as printed here, the Introduction is notable for its hearty approval of the tactics that had evolved in Social
!mocratic
practice in the late nineteenth century. For the work by Marx
or which
Engels wrote this introduction, see below, pp.
586-593.
��e �
o o y n�st �nzfes�o, the !heory � h ? ; s �c IOn
tl?n,
h
w rk here republished was Marx's first attempt t o explain a 0 c nte � p ra r history by means of i s materialist cone
on
�he baSIS of
was applied i n broad
Com� _
the given economic situation. In the
outline rr
to t h e w hole
o ern l s t r y ; III the articles by Marx and myself in the Neue . Rheznzsc e Zeztun g, it was constantly used to inte p e t political events 0 the day . Here, the and the q uestion was to
o
on
other h
,
demonstrate the mner causal connection in the course of a develop-
556
The Tactics of Social Democracy
557
ment which extended over some years, a development as critical, for the whole of E urope, as it was typical; hence, i n accordance with the conception of the author, to trace political events back to effects of what were, in the final analysis, economic causes. If events and series of events are j ud ged by current history, i t will never be possible to go back to the ultimate economic causes. Even today, when the specialised press concerned provides such rich material, i t still remains impossible even in England to follow day by day the movement of industry and trade in the world market and the changes which take place in the methods of production in s uch a way as to be able to draw a general conclusion, for any point o f time, from these manifold, complicated and ever-changing fac tors, the most important of which, into the bargain , generally o per ate a long time in secret before they suddenly make themselves vio lently felt on the surface. A clear survey of the economic history of a given period can never be obtained contemporaneously, but only subsequently, after a collecting and sifting of the material has taken place. Statistics ar.e a necessary auxiliary means here, and they always lag behi n d. For this reason, it is only too often necessary, in current history, to treat this, the most decisi ve, factor as constant, and the economic situation existing at the beginning of the period concerned as given and unalterable for the whole period, or else to take notice of only such changes in this situation as arise out of the patently manifest events themselves, and are, therefore, likewise pat ently manife s t . Hence, the materialist method has here quite often to limit itself to tracing political conflicts back to the struggles between the interests of the existing social classes and fractions of classes created by the economic development, and to prove the par ticular political parties to be the more or less adequate political ex pression of these same classes and fractions of cla sses. It is sel f-evident that t his unavoidable neglect of contemporane ous changes in the economic situation, the very basis of all the processes to be examined, must be a source of error. But all the conditions of a comprehensive presentation of current history un avoidably include sources of error-which, however, keeps nobody . from writing current history. When Marx undertook this work, the source of error mentioned was even more unavoidable. It was simply impossible during the peri od o f the Revolution of 1848-49 to fonow u p the economic transformations taking place at the same time or even to keep them i t view. It was the same during the first months of exile in London, in the autumn and winter of 1849-50. But that was jus t the time when Marx began this work. And in spite of these unfavourable cir cumstances, his exact knowledge both of the economic situation in
558
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
. .j •
France before, and of the political history 'of that country after the February Revolution made it possible for h i m to give a picture of events which laid bare their inner connections in a w;J.y never attained ever since, and which later brilliantly stood the double test applied by Marx himself. The first test resulted from the fact that after the spring of 18 50 Marx once again found leisure for economic studies, and first of all took up the economic history of the last ten years. Thereby what he had hitherto deduced, half a priori, from sketch y material, became absolutely clear to him from the facts themselves, namely, that the world trade crisis of 18 47 had been the true mother of the February and :March Revolutions, and that th e i ndustrial p rosperity, which had b een returning gradually si nce the middle of 1 8 48 and attained full bloom in 18 49 and 1 8 50, was the revitalising force of the newly strengthened European reaction. That was decisive. \Vhereas in the first three articles (which appeared in the January, February and March issues of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Politisch-okonom ische Revue,l Hamburg, 1 8 50) there was still the expectation of a
early new upsurge of revolutionary energy, the historical review writ ten by l\'1arx and myself for the last issue,
a
double i ssue (May to
October), which was pub l ished in the autumn of 18 50, breaks once and for all with these illusions: "A new revolution is possible only in the wake of a new crisis. It is, however, just as certain as this crisis." But that was the only essential c hange which had to be made. There was absolutely nothing to alter i n the i nterpretation of events given i n the earlier chapters, or in the causal connections established therein, as the continuation of the narrative from March 1 0 up to the autumn of 18 50 in the review in question proves . I have, therefore, i ncluded this continuation as the fourth article in the present new edition. The second test was even more severe. I mmediately after Louis Bonaparte's coup d'etat of December 2, 1 8 51, :Marx worked out anew the history of France from February 18 48 up to this event, which concluded the revolutionary period for the time being. (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Third edition, Ham burg,
l\oleissner, 18 8 5) . In this pamph let the period depicted in our pres ent publication is again dealt with, although more b riefly. Com pare this second presentation, written in the light of the decisive event which happened over a year later, with ours and it will be found that the author had very little to change. \Vhat, besides, gives our wor k quite special significance is the cir cumstance that it was the first to express the formula in which, by 1. New Rhenish Gazette, Politico-Economic Review, a journal published by
Marx and Engels in January-October 1 8 SO.
The Tactics of Social Democracy
559
common agreement, the workers' parties of all countries in the world briefly sum marise their demand for economic transformation : the appropriation of the means of production by society. In the second chapter, in connection with the "right to work," which is characterised as "the first clumsy formula wherein the revolutionary demands of the proletariat are summarised , " it is sai d : " B u t behind the right to work stands the power over capital; behind the power over capital, the
appropriation of the means of production,
their
subjection to the associated working class and, therefore, the aboli tion of wage labour as well as of capital and of their mutual rela tions . " Thus, here, for the first time, the proposition is formulated by which modern workers' socialism is equally sharply differentiated both from all the different shades o f feudal, bourgeois, petty-bour geois, etc . , social ism a n d also from the confused community of goods of utopian and of spontaneous workers' com munism . I f, later, Marx extended the formula to include a ppropriation of the means of exchange, this exten sion, which i n any case was self-evident after the
Communist Manifesto,
only expressed a corollary to the main
proposition . A few wiseacres in E ngland h ave of late added that the "means of distributio n " should also be handed over to society. It would b e difficult for these gentlemen t o sa y what these economic means .of distribut ion are, as distinct from the means of production and exchange; unless poLitical means of distribution are meant, taxes, poor relief, including the
Sachsenwald2
and other endow
ments. B u t, first, these a re already now means of distribution in pos session of society in the aggregate, e i ther of the state or of the com mun ity, and secondly, it is precisely the abolition of these that we desire . \Vhen the February Revolution broke out, all of us, as far as our conceptions of the cond itions and the course of revolutionary move ments were concerned, were under the spell of previous ' historical experience, particularly that of France . It was, indeed, the latter which had dominated the whole of European h istory since 1789; and from which now once again the signal had gone forth for gen eral revolutionary change. It was, therefore, natural and unavoidable " that our conceptions of the nature a n d the course of the " social revolution proclaimed in Paris in February 1 848, of the revolution of the proletariat, should be strongly coloured by memories of the protot
)es of 1789 and 18 30. Moreover, when the Paris uprising
found Its echo in the victorious insurrections in Vienna, Milan and Berlin; when the whole o f Europe right up to the Russian frontier was swept into the movement; when thereupon in Paris, in June, 2 . A vast estate granted to Bismarck by William I i n 1 8 7 1 .
560
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
the fi rst great battle for power between the proletaria t and the bour . , geoISIe �� s fought; when the very victory o f its class so shook the bourgeOI sIe o f all countries that it fled back i n to the a rms o f the m onarchist -feudal reaction which had just b ee n overthrow n-there could be no doub or us, under the circumst ances then obtaining , that the great deCIsIve combat had commen ced, that it would have to be foug h t out i n a single, long and vicissitud inous period of revo
��
� ution, but that it could only end in the final victory of the proletar
Iat. After t h e defeats o f 1849 w e i n n o way shared the illusions o f the vulgar democracy grouped around the future provisional govern ments in partibus.3 This vulgar democracy reckoned on a speedy and finally decisive victory of the "people" over the " tyrants"; we looked to a long struggle, after the removal of the " tyran ts," among the antagonistic elements concealed within this "people" itse l f. Vulgar democracy expected a renewed outbreak any day; we declared as early as autumn 1850 that a t least the first chapter of the revolutionary period was c losed and that n othing was to be
expected until the outbreak of a new w o r l d economic crisis . For which reason we were excommunicated, as traitors to the revol ution, by the very people w h o la ter, almost without exception, made their peace with B ismarck-so far as B ismarck found them worth the trouble. B u t history has shown us too to have been wrong, has revealed our point of view of that time to have been a n i llusio n . It has done even more : it has n ot merely dispelled the erroneous notions we then held; it has also completely transformed the conditions u n der which the proletariat has to fight . The mode o f struggle o f 1 848 is today obsolete in every respect, and this is a point which deserves closer examination on the present occasion . All revol u ti o n s up to the present day have resulted in the dis placement of one definite class rule by a nother; but all ruling c lasses up to n ow have been only sma ll m inorities in relation to the ruled mass of the peopl e . One ruling minority was thus overthrown; another minority seized the helm o f state in i ts stead and refash ioned the state institutions to suit its own i n terests . This was on every occasion the minority group qualified and called to rule by the given degree of economic development; and j ust for that reason, and only for that reason, i t happened that the r u l e d maj ority either participated in the revolution for the benefit o f the former o r else calmly acquiesced in it. But if we disregard the concrete content in each case , the common form of all these revol utions was that they were m inority revolution s . Even when the m a j ority took part, i t did 3. In partibus in/idelium: literally, in the lands of the infidels, that is, be-
yond the frontiers o f one's own country, in emigration.
The Tactics of Social D emocracy
561
so-whether wittingly or not-only in t h e service of a minority; b u t because of this, or even simply because of the passive, unresisting attitude of the m a j ority, this minority acquired the appearance of being the representative o f the whole peopl e . A s a rule, after t h e first great success , t h e victorious minority di vided; one half was satisfied with what h a d been gained, the other wanted to go still further, and put forward new demands, which, partly at least, were also in the real o r apparent interest of the great mass of the people. In individual cases these more radical demands were actu a l l y forced through, but often only for the moment; the more moderate party would regain the upper hand, and what had last been won wou l d wholly or partly be l os t agai n ; the vanquished would then shriek o f treachery or ascribe their defeat to acciden t . In real ity, however, the truth o f the matter was largely this : the achievements o f the first victory were only safeguarded by the second victory of the more radical party; this having been a t tained, and, w'th it, w h a t was necessary for the moment, the radicals and their achievements vanished once more from the stage. All revolutions of modern · times , beginning with the great Eng lish Revolution of the seventeenth century, showed these features, which appeared inseparable from every revolutionary struggle. They appeared appl icable, also, to the struggle of the proletariat for its emancipation; all the more applicable, since precisel y in 1848 there were but a very few people who had any idea at all of the direction i n which this e m a ncipation was to be sough t . The proletarian masses themselves, even i n Paris, after the victory, were still abso lutely in the dark a s to the path to be taken . And yet the move ment was there, instinctive, spontaneous, irrepressible . \Vas not this j u s t the situation in which a revolution had to succeed, led, true, by a minority, but this time not in the interest o f the m i nority, but in the veriest interest o f the majority? If, in all the longer revolution ary periods, it was so easy to win the great masses of the people by the merely plausible false representations o f the forward-thrusting minorities, why should they be less susceptible to ideas which were the truest
reflection
of
their
economic condition,
which
were
nothing but the clear, rational expression of their needs, of needs n o t yet understood but merely vaguely felt b y them? To be sure, this revolutionary mood o f the masses had almost always, a n d usually very speedily, given way to lassitude or e v e n to a revul sion of feeling a s soon as illusion evaporated a n d disappointment set i n . B u t here i t was n o t a question o f false representations, b u t o f giving effect to the highest special interests of the great majority itself, interests which, true, were at that time by no means clear to this great majority, but which soon enough had to become clear to it, in the course of giving practical effect to them, by their convincing
562
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
obviousness . An d when, as Marx showed in this third article, in th e spring of 1 8 50, the development of the bourgeois repub that arose out of the " socia l " Revolution of 1 8 4 8 h ad even
� conc��ated
real power in the hands of the big bourgeoisie-monarchisbca l l y inclined as i t w a s i n to t h e bargain-and, on the o t h e r hand, had grouped all t h e other socia l classes, peasantry as well as petty bour geoisie, round the proletariat, so that, du ring and after the common
victory, not they but the proletariat grown wise by experience had to become the decisive factor-was there n ot every prospect then of turning the revolution of the minority into a revolution of the m a j ority? History has proved us, and all who thought like us, wrong. It h as made it clear that the state of economic development on the Conti nent at that time was not, b y a long way, ripe for the elimination of capitalist production; it has' proved this by the economic revolution which, since 1 848, has seized the whole of the Continen t, and has caused big ind ustry to take rea l roo t in France, Austria, Hungary, Poland and, recently, in Russia, while it has made Germany posi tively an industrial country of the first rank-all on a capitalist basis, which i n the year 1 84 8 , therefore, still had great capacity for expansion . But it is j us t this ind ustrial revolu tion which has every where produced clarity in class rela tions, has removed a number of intermediate forms handed down from the period of manufacture and i n Eastern Eu rope even from guild handicraft, has created a genuine bourgeoisie and a genuine large-sca le industrial proletariat and has pushed them into the foreground oJ social d evelopmen t . However, owing to this, t h e struggle between these two great classes, a struggle which, apart from England, existed in 1 84 8 only in Paris and, a t the most, i n a few big industri a l centres, has spread over the whol e of Europe and reached an intensity s t i l l inconceiva ble in 1 84 8 . At that time the many obscure evangels of the sects, with their panaceas; today the one generally recognised, crystal-clear theory of Marx, sharply formulating the ultimate aims of the strug gle . A t that time the masses, sundered and d iffering according to l ocality and nationality, linked only by the feeling of common suf fering, undeveloped, helplessly tossed to and fro from enthusiasm to despair; today the one great internationa l a rmy of Socialists, march ing irresistibly on and growing daily in num ber, organisation, disci p l i ne, insight and certainty of victory . I f even this mighty army of the proletariat has still not reached its goal, if, far from winning vic tory by one mighty stroke, it has slowly to press forward from posi tion to position in a hard, tenacious struggle, this only proves, once and for a l l, how impossible i t was in 1 8 4 8 to win social transforma
tion by a ' simple surprise attack.
The Tactics of Social Democracy
563
A bourgeoisie split into two . dynastic-monarchist sections,4 a bourgeois ie, however, which demanded, above all, p eace and secu rity for its financial operations, faced by a proletariat vanquished, indeed, but still always a menace, a proletariat round which petty bourgeois and peasants grouped themselves more and m o re-the continual threat of a violent outbreak, which, nevertheless, offered absolutely no prospect of a final solution-such was the situation , as if specially created for the
coup
d e t a t of the third, the pseudo '
d emocratic pretender, Louis B onaparte. On December
2,
1 8 51 , by
means of the army, he put an end to the tense situation and secured Europe domestic tranquillity in order to confer u pon it the blessing o f a new era o f wars.5 The period of revolutions from below was concluded for the time being; there followed a period of revolutions from above . The reversion to the empire in
1 8 5 1 gave new proof of the
unripeness of the proletarian aspirations of that time . But it was itself to create the conditions under which they were bound to ripen . Internal tranquillity ensured the full development o f the new in d ustrial boom; the necessity o f keeping the army occupied and of d iverting the revolutionary currents outwards produced t h e wars in which Bonaparte, under the pretext of asserting "the principle of nationality, " sought to hook annexations for France. His imitator, B ismarck, adopted the same policy for Prussia; he ma de his coup d' etat, his revolution from above, in 1 86 6 , against the German Con federation and Austria, and no less against the Pruss ian Kon fliktskammer.6 But E u rope was too small for two B onapartes and
the irony of h istory so willed it that Bismarck overthrew Bonapa rte, and King \Villiam of Prussia not only established the little German empire,7 b u t also the French republic. The general result, however, was that in Europe the independence and internal unity of the great nations, with the exception of Poland, had become a fact. \Vithin relatively modest limits, it is true, but, for all that, on a scale large enough to allow the development of the working class to proceed without find ing national complications any longer a serious 4. The parties referred to are the Legit imists, the supporters o f the "legiti mate, " Bourbon, dynasty, w h o were in p o w e r in F r a n c e u p to 1 7 9 2 and a l s o during the epoch o f t h e Restoration ( 1 8 1 4-3 0 ) , and the OTleanists, the supporters o f the Orleans dynasty, who came t o power d u ring the July Revolu tion o f 1 83 0 a n d were overthrown by the Revolution o f 1 848. S. During the reign o f Napoleon III, France took part i n the Crimean Cam paign ( 1 8 54 -5 5 ) , carried on war with Austria o n account o f Italy ( 1 85 9 ) ,
participated together with England i n . . the wars against China ( 1 8 5 6- 5 8 and 1 8 6 0 ) , began the conquest o f Indo China, organised an expedition i n t o S y r i a ( 1 8 6 0 - 6 1 ) a n d M e x i c o ( 1 8 6 26 7 ) , and finally, in 1 870-7 1 , waged war against Prussia. 6. KonjliktskammeT, that is, t h e Prus sian Chamber then i n conflict with the government. 7. This term is applied t o the German Empire ( without A u s t ria) that arose i n 1 8 7 1 under Prussia's hegemony.
564
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
obstacle. The grave-diggers of the Revolution of 1 84 8 had become the executors of its will. And alongside of them already rose threat eningly the heir of 1 8 48, the proletariat, in the shape of the Inter
national.
After the war of 1 8 70-7 1 , Bonaparte vanishes from the stage and Bism arck's mission is fulfilled, so that he can now sink back again
into the ordinary Junker. The period, however, is brought to a c lose by the Paris Commune. An underhand attempt by Thiers to steal the cannon of the Paris National Guard c alled forth a vic torious rising. It was shown once more that in Paris none b u t a proletarian revolution is any longer possible . After the victory power fel l, quite of itself and quite undisputed, into the hands of the working c lass. And once again it was proved how i m possible even then, twenty years after the time described in our work, this rule of the working class still was . On the one hand, France left Paris in the lurch, looked on while it bled profusely from the bullets of Macl\lahon ; on the other hand, the Com mune w a s consumed i n unfruitful strife between the two parties which split it, the Blanquists ( the m ajor ity) and the Proudhonists ( the minority ) , neither of which knew what was to be done. The victory which came as a gift in 1 8 7 1 remained j ust a s unfruitful a s the surprise attac k o f 1 84 8 . I t w a s believed that the mil itant proletariat had been finally buried with the Paris Commune. B u t, completely to the contrary, it dates its most powerful resurgence from the Com mune and the Franco-Prussian 'Var. The recruitment of the whole of the popula tion able to bear arms into armies that henceforth could be counted only in millions , and the introduction of fire-arms, projectiles and exp losives of hitherto undreamt-of efficacy, created a complete revo lution in all warfare. This revolution, on the one hand, put a sudden end to the B onapartist war period and ensured peaceful industrial development by making any war other than a world war of unheard-of cruelty and a bsolutely incalculable outcome an impos sibility. On the othe r hand, it caused military expenditure to rise in geometrical progression and thereby forced up taxes to exorbitant levels and so drove the poorer classes of people into the arms of socialism . The annexation of Alsac e-Lorraine, the immediate c ause of the mad competition in· armaments, was able to set the French and German bourgeoisie chauvinistically at each other's throats; for the workers of the two countries i t became a new bond of unitv. And the anniversarv of the Paris Commune became the first univer sal day of celebrati o n of the whole proletariat. The war of 1 8 70-7 1 and the defeat of the Commune transferred the centre of gravity of the European workers' movement for the time being from France to Germany, as Marx had foretold . In France it naturally took vears to recover from the blood-letting of
The Tactics of Social Democracy
565
May 1 87 1 . In Germany, on the other hand, where industry-fos tered, in addition, in positively hothouse fashion by the blessing of the French milliards8-devel oped more a n d m o r e rapidly, Social Democracy experienced a still more rapid and enduring growth . Thanks to the intell igent use which the German workers made o f t h e universal suffrage introduced i n 1 8 66, the astonishing growth o f the party is m ad e p la in t o all the world by incontestable figures : 1871,
1 0 2 ,000;
1 8 74, 3 5 2 , 000;
1 87 7 , 49 3 , 000 Social-D emocratic
votes . Then came recognition of this advance by high authority in the shape of the Anti-Socialist Law; the party was temporarily bro ken u p, the number of votes dropped to 3 1 2 ,000 in 1 8 8 1 . But that was quickly overcome, and then, under the pressure of the Excep tional Law, witho ut a press, without a legal organisation and without the righ t o f combination and assembly , rapid expansion really began : 1 8 84, 5 5 0, 000; 1 8 8 7 , 7 6 3 , 000; 1 890, 1 , 4 2 7 ,000 votes. Thereupon the hand of the state was paralysed. The Anti-Socialist Law disap
peared; social ist votes rose to 1 , 7 8 7 ,000, over
a
quarter of all the
votes cast . 'The government and the ruling classes had exhausted all their expedients--uselessly, purposelessly, unsuccessfully. The tangi ble proofs of their i mpotence, which the authorities , from night watchman to the imperial chancellor, had had to accept-and that from the despised workers!-these proofs were counted in millions . Th e state was a t the end of its tether, the workers only a t the begin n in g of theirs. B u t, besides, the German workers rendered
a
second great service
to their cause in addition to the fi rst, a service performed by their mere existence as the strongest, best disciplined and most rapidly growing Socialist Party. They supplied their comrades in all coun tries with a new weapon, and one o f the sharpest, when they showed them how to make use o f universal suffrage. There had long been universal s uffrage in France, but it had fallen into disrepute through the misuse to which the Bonapartist government had p u t it. After the Commune there was no workers' party to make use of it. I t also existed in Spain since the republic, but in Spain boycott of elections was ever the rule of all serious opposition parties. The experience of the Swiss with universal suf frage was also anything but encouraging for a workers' party. The revolutionary workers of the Latin
countries had been wont to
regard the suffrage as a snare, as an instrument of government trick ery. It was otherwise in Germany. The Communist Manifesto had already proclaimed the winning o f universal suffrage, of democracy, as one o f the first and most important tasks of the militant proletar iat, and Lassal1e had again taken up this point. Now, when B is8. The reference is to the payment of the five-bill ion-franc indemnity by France to Germany under the terms o f
the 10,
Frankfurt
187 l .
Peace
Treaty
of
May
566
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
marck found himself compelled to introduce this franc hise as the only means of interesting the mass o f the people in his plans, our workers immediately took it in earnest and sent August Bebel to the first, constituent Reichstag. And from that day on, they have used the franchise in a way which has paid them a thousandfold and h a s served as a model to t h e workers of a l l countries . The franchise has
transforme, ete ;usqu'ici, en instrument d'eman
been, in t he w o r d s of t h e French Marxist programme,
de moyen de duperie qu'il
a
cip ation-tra nsformed by them -from a means of deception, which
i t was before, into an instrument of emancipati o n . 9 And if univer sal suffrage had offered no other advantage than that it allowed us to count our n u mbers every t h ree years; that by the regularly esta b lished, unexpectedly rapid rise in the number of our votes it increased in equal measure the workers' certainty of victory and the dismay of their opponents, and so became our best means of propa ganda; that it accurately informed us concerning our own strength and that of all h ostile parties, and thereby provided us with a mea sure o f proportion for our actions second to none, safeguarding us from untimely timidity as much as from untimely foolhardiness-if this h a d been the only adva ntage we gained from the suffrage, it would still have been much more than enough. B u t it did more than this by far. In election agitation i t provided us with a means, second to none, of getting in touch with the mass o f the people where they still stand aloof from us; of forcing all parties to defend their views and actions aga i nst our attacks before all the peopl e; and, further, it provided our representatives in the Reichstag with a p latform from which they could speak to their opponents in parlia ment, and to the masses without, with · quite other authority and freedom than in the press or a t meetings. Of what avail was their Anti-Socia list Law to th e government and the bourgeoisie when election campaigning and socialist speech es in the Reichstag contin ually broke through it? \Vith this successful utilisation of universal suffrage, however, an entirely new method of proletarian struggle came into operation, and this method quickly developed further. It was found that the state institutions, in which the rule of the bourgeoisie is orga nised, offer the working class sti l l further opportun ities to fight these very state institutions . The workers took part in elections to particular Diets, to municipal councils and to trades cou rts.; they contested with the bourgeoisie every post in the occupa tion of w hich a sufficient part of the proletariat h a d a say. And so it happened that the bourgeoisie and the government came to be much more afraid 9 . This ph rase was taken f r o m the preamble, written by M ar x , o f the p rogramme o f the French Workers' Party.
The programme w a s adopted i n 1 8 8 0, at the H avre Co ngress o f the Party.
The Tactics of Social Democracy
567
of the legal than of the illegal action of the workers' party, of the results of elections than of those of rebellion . For
here,
too,
the conditions of the struggle had essentially
change d . Rebellion in the old style, street fighting with barricades, which decided the issue everywhere up to 1 848, was to a consideraLet us have n o illusions about i t : a real victory of an insurrection ble extent obsolete. over the military in street fighting, a victory as between two armies, is one of the rarest exceptions. And the insurgents counted on i t j u s t as rarely. F o r them i t w a s solely a question of making the troops yield to moral influences which, i n a fight between the armies of two warring countries, do not come into play at all o r d o so to a m u c h s m a l l e r extent. I f they succeed in t h i s , the t r o o p s f a i l to respond, or t h e commanding officers l o s e t h e i r heads, and t h e insurrection w i n s . I f t h e y do not succeed in t h i s , then, e v e n where the military are in the minority, the superiority of better equipment and tra ining, o f single leadership, of the planned employment ·of the military forces and of discipline makes itself felt. The most that a n insurrection can achieve in the way o f actual tactical operations is the proper construction and defence o f a single barricade. Mutual support, the disposition and employment of reserves-in short, con certed and co-ordinated action of the individual detachm ents , indis pensable even for the defence o f one section of a town, not to speak of the whole o f a large town, will be attainable only to a very lim ited extent, and most of the time not at all . Concentration of the military forces at a decisive point is, of course, out of the question here . Hence passive de fence is the prevailing form o f fighting; the a ttack will rise here and there, but only by way of exception, to occa sional thrusts and flank assaults; a s a rule, however, it will be limited to occupation o f positions abandoned by retreating troops. In addi tion, the military have at their disposal artillery and fully equipped corps of trained engineers, resources o f war which, in nearly every case, the insurgents entirely lack . No wonder, then, that even the barricade fighting conducted with the greatest heroism-Paris, June 1 84 8 ; Vienna, October 1 84 8 ; Dresden, May 1 849-ended i n the defeat of the insurrection as soon as the leaders of the attack, unhampered by political considerations, acte d from the purely mil itary standpoint, and their soldiers remained reliable. The numerous successes o f the insurgents u p to 1 848 were due to a g reat variety of causes. In Paris, in July 1 8 3 0 and February 1 84 8 , as i n m o s t of the Spanish street fighting, a citizens ' .guard stood between the insurgents and the military. This guard either sided directly with the insurrection, or else by its lukewarm, indecisive attitude caused the troops li kewise to vacillate, and supplied the insurrection with arms into the barga i n . \Vhere this citizens ' guard
568
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
opposed the insurrection from the outset, as in June 1 848 in Paris, the insurrection was vanquished. In Berlin in 1 84 8 , the people were victorious partl y throug h a considerable accession of new fighting forces during the night and the morning of [March] the 1 9th, partly as a result of the exhaustion and bad victualling of the troops, and, final ly, partly as a result of the paralysis that was seiz ing the comma n d . B ut in all cases the fight was won because the troops failed to respond, because the commanding officers lost the faculty to decide or because their hands were tied. Even in the classic time of street fighting, therefore, the barricade produced more of a moral than a material effect. It was a means of shaking the stead fastness of the military. I f it held out until this was attained, victory was won; if not, there was defeat. This is the main point, wl1ich must be kept in view, likewise, w hen the chances of possible future street fighting are examined. Already in 18 49, these chances were pretty poor. Everywhere the bourgeoisie had thrown in its l ot with the governmen ts, "culture and property" had hailed and feasted the military moving against insurrection. The spel l of the barricade was broke n ; the s o l d ier no longer saw behind it "the people," b u t rebels, agitators, plunderers, levellers, the scum of society; the officer had in the course of time become versed i n the tactical forms of street fig hting, he no longer marched straight ahead and without cover against the improvised breastwork, but went round it through gardens, yards and houses. And this was n o w successful, with a little skill, in nine cases out of ten . But since then there have been very many more changes, an d all in favour of the m ilitary. If the big tow�s have become considerably bigger, the armies have become bigger sti l l . Paris and B erlin ha ve, since 1 848, grown less than fourfold, but their garrisons have grown more than that. By means of the rai lways, these garrisons can, in twenty-four h ours, be more than doubled, and i n forty-eight hours they can be increased to huge armies. The arming of this enor mously increased number of troops has become incomparably more effective. In 1 848 the smooth-bore, muzzle-loading percussion gun, today the small-calibre, breech-loading magazine rifle, which s hoots four times as far, ten times as accurately and ten times as -fast as the former. At that time the relatively ineffecti ve round shot and grape shot of the arti l lery; today the percussion shel ls, of which one is suf ficient to demolish the best barricade. At that time the pick-axe of the sapper for breaking through fire-walls; today the dynamite car tridge. On the other hand, all the cond itions of the insurgents' side have grown worse. A n insurrection with which all sections o f the people sympathise will hardly recur; in the class struggle all the middle
The Tactics of Social Democracy
56 9
strata will probably never group themselves round the proletariat so excl usively that in comparison the party of reaction gathered round the bourgeoisie will well-nigh disappea r . The " people," therefore, will always appear divided, and
thus a most powerful lever,
so
extraordinarily effective in 1 84 8 , is gone. If more soldiers who have seen service came over to the insurrectionists, the arming of them would become so much the more d i fficult. The hunting and fancy guns of the munitions shops-even i f not previously made unusable by removal of part of the lock by order o f the police-are far from being a match for the magazine rifle of th e sol dier, even in close fighting. Up to 1 84 8 it was possible to make the necessary ammuni tion oneself out of powder a n d lea d; today the cartridges differ for each gun, and a re everywhere alike only in one point, namely, that they are a complicated product o f big industry, and therefore not t o be manufactured
ex tempore,
w ith. t h e result that m o s t g u n s are
useless as long as one does not possess th e ammunition specially suited to the m . And, finally, s i n ce 1 84 8 the newly built quarters of the big cities have been laid out i n long, straight, broad streets, as though made to g i v e full effect to the new cannon and rifles. T h e revolutionist w o u l d have to b e mad who himself c h o s e the n e w working-class d istricts in the N o r t h or E a s t o f B e rlin f o r a barricade figh t . D o e s t h a t m e a n t h a t in t h e future street fighting will not longer play any role? Certainly not. It only means that the conditions s i n ce 1 84 8 have become far more unfavourable for civilian fighters and far more favo u rable for the military. In future, street fighting can , therefore, be victorious only if this disadvantageous situation is compensated by other factors . Accordingly, i t will occur more seldom in the beginning of a great revolution than in its further progress, and will have to be undertaken with greater forces. These, ' however, may then well prefer, as in the whole great French Revo lution or on September 4 and October 3 1 , 1 8 70,1 in Paris, the open attack to the passive barricade tactics. D o e s the reader now understand why t h e powers t h a t b e posi" tively want t o get us to go where the guns shoot and the sabres slash? \-Vhy they accuse us today of cowardice, because we do not betake ourselves without more ado i n t o t h e street, where we are cer tain o f defeat in advance? \-V hy they so earnestly implore us to play for once the part of cannon fodder? The gentlemen pour out their prayers and their challenges for nothing, for absolutely nothing. \Ve are not so stupid . They might just as well demand from their enemy in the next war that he 1. On September ment of Louis thrown and the and on October
4 , 1 8 70, the govern Bonaparte was over republic proclaimed, 3 1 o f the same year
there took place the unsuccessful at tempt of the B1anquists to make an in surrection against the Government of "National Defence."
5 70
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
should accept battle in the line formation of old Fritz,2 or in the columns of whole divisions a la \Vagram and \Va terloo, and with the flint-lock in his hands at that. If conditions have changed in the case of war between na tions, this i s no less true in the case of the class struggl e . The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by sma l l conscious mi norities at the head of unconscious masses, is pas t . \Vhere it is a q uestion of a complete trans forma tion of the social organisation, the masses themselves m u s t also be in it, must themselves a l ready have grasped what is a t stake, what they are going in for, body and soul . The history of the l as t fifty years h a s taught u s t ha t . B ut in order that t h e masses m a y un derstand wha t i s to b e done, long, persistent work is required, and i t i s j ust t h i s work that we are now pursuing, and with a success which drives the e n e Pl Y to despair. In the Latin countries, also, i t is being realised more and more that the old tactics m ust be revise d . Everywhere the German exam ple of utilising the suffrage, of winning all posts accessible to us, has been i m i t a t e d ; everywhere the unprepared l a u nc h in g o f a n attack has been relega ted to the backgrou n d . In France, where for more than a hundred years the ground has been undermined by revolu tion after revolution, w here there is not a single party which has not done its share in conspiracies, insurrections a n d all other revolution ary actions; in France, where, as a result, the government i s by no means sure of t h e a r m y and where, in general, the cond i tions for a n insu rrectionary coup de main a r e f a r more favourable t h a n in Ger m a ny-even in France the Socia lists are rea l ising more a n d more that n o lasting victory is possible for them, un less they first win the great mass of the people, that is, i n this case, the peasa n t s . Slow propaganda work and parliamentary activity are recognised here, too, as the immediate tasks of the party. Successes were not lacking. Not only have
a
whole series of m u n icipal councils been won; fifty
S ocialists have seats in the Cham bers, and they have al ready over thrown three ministries and a president of the republic. In Belgium last year the workers forced the adoption of the franchise, and have been victorious in a qua rter of the constituencies. In Switzerland, in Ita l y, in Denmark, yes, even in B ul garia and Rumania the Socialists are represented i n the parliaments. I n Austria all parties agree tha t our ad mission to t h e Reichsrat c a n no longer be with h el d . \Ve will get in, that is certain; the only q uestion stil l in dispute is : by which door? And even in Russia, when the famous Zemsky SabOT meets -that National Assembly to which young Nicholas offers such vain resistance-even there we can reckon with certainty on being repre sented in i t . Of course, our foreign comrades d o n o t thereby in t h e l e a s t re2. Frederick II, King o f Prussia ( 1 7 40-8 6 ) .
5 71
The Tactics of Social Democr acy
nounce their right to revolution. The right to revolution i s , after alI , the
only
really "historical right,"
the
only
right on
which
all
m odern states without exception rest, Mecklenburg included, whose aristocratic revolution was ended in 1 7 5 5 by the "hereditary settle ment" [ " E rbvergleich" ] , the glorious charter of feudalism still valid today. The right to revolution is so incontestably recognised in the general consciousness that even General von B oguslawski derives the right to a 'coup d'etat, which h e vindicates for his Kaiser, solely from this popular righ t . B u t whatever m a y happen in other countries, t h e German Social Democracy occupies a special position and therewith, at least in the immediate future, has a special task . The two million voters whom i t sends to the ballot box, together with the young men and women who stand behind them as non-voters, form the most num erous, most compact mass, the decisive "shock force" of the international proletarian army. This mass already supplies over a fourth of the votes cast; and as the by-elections to the Reichstag, the Diet elec tions in individual states, the municipal council and trades court elections demonstrate, it increases incessantly. Its growth proceeds as spontaneously, as steadily, as irresistibly, and at the same time as tranquilly as a natural proces s . All government intervention has proved powerless against it. \Ve can count even today on two and a quarter mill i on voters. If it continues in this fashion, by the end of the century we shall conquer the greater part of the middle strata of society, petty bourgeois and sma l l peasants, and grow into the deci sive power in the land, before which all other powers will have to bow, whether they like it or not. To keep this growth going without interruption until it of itself gets beyond the control of the prevail ing governmental system, not to fritter away this daily increasing shock force in vanguard skirmishes, but to keep it intact until the decisive day, that is our main task . And there is only one means by which the steady rise of the socialist fighting forces in Germany could be temporarily halted, and even thrown back for some time : a clash on a big scale with the military, a blood-letting like that of 1 8 7 1 in Paris. I n t h e l o n g run that would also be overcome. To shoot a party which numbers ,millions out of existence is too much even for all the magazine rifles o f Europe and America . But the normal development would be impeded, the shock force would, per haps, not be available at the critical moment, the decisive combat would be delayed, protracted and attended by heavier sacrifices . The irony of World history turns everything upside down. \V e, t h e "revolutionists," the "overthrowers"-we are thriving far bet ter on legal methods than on illegal methods and overthrow. The parties of Order, a s they call themselves, are perishing under the legal conditions created by themselves. They cry despairingly with
" 572
Revolutionary Program and Strategy
Odilon B arrot : fa zegalite nous tue, lega lity is the death of us; where as we, under this legality, get firm muscles and rosy cheeks a n d look like life eternal . And i f we are n o t so crazy a s to l e t ourselves be driven to street fighting i n order to p l ease them, then in the end there is nothing left for them to do but themselves break through this fata l legality. Meanwhile they make new laws against overthrows. Again every thing is turned upside down . These anti-overthrow fanatics of today, are they not themselves the overthrowers of yesterday ? Have we perchance evoked the civil war of 1 866? Have we driven the King of Hanover, the Elector of Hesse , and the Duke of Nassau
from their hereditary lawful domains and a n nexed t h ese hereditary
domains? And these overthrowers of the German Confederation and three crowns by the grace of God complain of overthrow! Quis tulerit G racchos de seditione queretes?3 \Vho could
allow
the
Bismarck worshippers to rail at overthrow? Let them, nevertheless, put through their anti-overthrow bil ls, make them still worse, transform the whole penal law into indiarub ber, they wil l gain nothing but new proof of their impotence . I f they want t o deal Social-Democracy a serious blow they will have t o resort t o quite other measures i n additio n . They c a n cope with the Social�Democratic overthrow, which j ust now is doing so well by keeping the law, only by an overthrow on the part o f the parties of Order, a n overthrow which cannot live without breaking the l aw. H err Rossler, the Prussian bureaucrat, and Herr von Boguslawski, ' the Prussi a n general, h a v e shown t h e m th e only way perhaps still possible of getting at the workers, who simply refuse to l et them selves be lured into street fighting. B reach of the constitution, dicta torship, return to absolutism, regis voluntas suprema lex !4 There fore, take courage, gentlemen; here half measures wil l not do; here you must go the whole hog! But do not forget that the German empire, l i ke a l l s m a l l states and genera lly all modern states, is a product of contract; of the con tract, fi rst, of the princes with one another arid, second, of the princes with the people. I f one side breaks the contract, the whole contract falls to the ground; the other side i s then also no longer bound, as Bismarck demonstrated to u s so beautiful ly i n 1 86 6 . If, therefore, you break the constitution of the Reich, the Socia l Dem ocracy i s free, a n d can d o as i t pleases with regard to you. B u t i t w i l l hard ly b l u r t out to you today what i t is going t o d o the n . I t is now, a lmost to t h e year, sixteen centuries since a dangerous party of overthrow was l i kewise active in the Roman empire. I t undermined religion a n d a ll the foundations o f t h e sta te; i t flatly I
!
1.'I
fl I'!
3. Who would suffer the Gracchi complain of sedition?
to
4. The King's will is the supreme law!
5 73
The Tactics of Soci al Democracy
denied that Caesar's will was the supreme law; i t was without a fatherland, was international; i t spread over all countries of the empire, from Ga ul to Asia, and beyond the frontiers of the empire. It had long carried on seditious activities in secret, underground; for a considerable time, however, i t had felt itself strong enough t o come out into the open . T h i s p a r t y of overthrow, w h i c h w a s known by the name of Christians, was also strongly represented in the army; whole legions were Christian. Wh en they were ordered to attend the sacrificial ceremonies o f the pagan established church, in order to do the honours there, the subversive soldiers had the audac ity to stick peculiar emblems-crosses-on their helmets in protes t . Even the wonted barrack bullying of their superior officers w a s fruit less . The Emperor Diocletian could no longer quietly look on while order, obedience and discipline in his army were being undermined. H e interfered energetically, while there was still time . He promul gated an anti-Socialist-beg pardon, I meant to say anti-Christian -law. The meetings of the overthrowers were forbidden, their meeting halls were closed o r even pulled down, the Christian emblems, crosses, etc., were, like the red handkerchiefs in Saxony, prohibited. Christians were declared incapable of holding public o ffi ce ; they were not to be allowed to become even corporal s . Since there were not available a t that time judges so well trained in "respect of persons" a s Herr von Koller's anti-overthrow bi1l5 assumes, Christians were forbidden out of hand to seek justice before a court. This exceptional law was also without effect. The Christians tore i t down from the walls with scorn; they are even supposed to have burnt the Emperor's palace in Nicomedia over his hea d. Then the latter revenged himself by the great persecution of Christians in the year 3 0 3 of our era. It was the last of its kin d . And i t w a s s o effective t h a t seventeen years l a t e r t h e a r m y consisted overwhelmingly o f Christians, and the succeeding autocrat of the whole Roman empire, Constantine, called the Great by the priests, proclaimed Christianity the state religion. 5. A new bill against the Socialists, introduced in the Reichstag on December
5, 1 8 94 , 1895.
and
rejected
on
May
I I,
PART
IV
Society and Politics in the �ll1eteenth <:entury
Speech at the Anniversary of the People's Paper KARL MARX
This speech is a vivid expression of Marx's sense of proletarian revolution as a volcanic presence in European society of the mid-nineteenth century, and also of his intensely moralistic vision of the coming revolution as capi tal punishment o f a society that deserved to die_ He gave the speech in English on April 1 4, 1 8 5 6, and it was published a few days later in the People's PttpeT_ This was a Chartist paper, published in London from 1 8 5 2 t o 1 8 5 8 , for which Marx occasionally wrote articles .
The so-called Revolutions of 1 84 8 were but poor incidents small fractures and fissures in the dry crust of European society_ However, they denounced the abyss_ Beneath the a pparently solid surface, they betrayed oceans of liquid matter, only needing expan sion to rend into fragments continents o f hard rock Noisily a n d confusedly t h e y proclaimed the emancipation o f t h e Proletarian, i.e . , the secret o f the nineteenth century, and o f the r.evolution of
that century. That social revolution , it is true, was no novelty invented in 1 84 8 . Steam, electricity, and the self-acting mule were revolutionists of a rather more dangerous character than even citi zens Barbes, Raspail and Blanqui. B ut, although the atmosphere in which we live, weighs upon every one with a 20, 000 l b . force, do you feel it? No more than European society before 1 84 8 felt the revolutionary atmosphere enveloping and pressing i t ·from all sides . There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth cen tury, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life il'i dustrial and scientific forces, which no epoch of the former human history had ever suspected . On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing t h e horrors recorded o f the latter times of the Roman empire . In our days everything seems pregnant with its con trary_ Machinery, gifted with the won577
578
Society . and Politics in th e Nineteenth Century
derful power of shortening and fructifying human labour, we behold starving and overworking it. The new-fangled sources of wealth, by some strange weird spell, are turned into sources of want. The victories of art seem bought by the loss of character. At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems t o become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the p ure light o f science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignoran ce. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and i n stultifying human life into a material force. This antagonism between modern industry and sci ence on the one hand, m odern misery and dissolution on the other hand;
this antagonism between the productive powers, and the
social relations of our epoch is a fact, palpable, overwhelming, and not to be controverted. Some parties may wail over i t ; others may wish to get rid of modern arts, in order to get rid of m odern con flicts. Or they may imagine that so signal a progress in industry wants to be completed by as signal a regress in politics. On our part, we do not mistake the shape of the shrewd spirit that continues to mark all these contradictions. \Ve know that to work well the new fangled forces of society, they only want to be mastered by new fangled men-and such are the working men. They are as much the invention of modern time as machinery itself. In the signs that bewilder the middle class, the aristocracy and the poor prophets of regression , we do recognise our brave friend, Robin Goodfellow,l the old mole that can work in the earth so fast, that worthy pioneer -the Revolution . The English working men are the first born sons o f modern i ndustry. They will then, certainly, not be the last in aiding the social revolution produced by that industry, a revolution, which means the emancipation of their own class all over the world, which is as universal as capital-rule and wages-slavery. I know the heroic struggles the English working class have gone through since the middle of the last century-struggles no less glorious, because they are shrouded i n obscurity, and buried by the middle class his torian . To revenge the misdeeds of the ruling class, there existed in the middle ages, in Germany, a secret tribunal, called the "Vehmger icht." If a red cross was seen marked on a h ouse, people knew that its owner was doomed by the "Vehm." All the houses of E urope are now m arked with the mysterious red cro s s . History i s the j udge -its executioner, the proletarian . 1. A sprite who was popularly believed i n England durin.� the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to l e n d people a
helping h a n d . He is one of the chief characters in Shakesp eare's comedy A
Midsummer N ight ' s Dream.
W orking... Class Manchester FRIEDRICH E NGELS �
�
� �
as s e n t to En la d Germ an man ufact rer, Enge ls, t h e son of a well- to-do the office a t e In ess busm o, to learn 8 2. at the age of twen ty-tw .. Man chest er He e of city strial indu the in nd Enge ls pape r mill n e ered mate n l two years and whil there gat main ed in Engl and for nearl y m Engl and m Class g orkm W the of dition for his first book , The Con below , fr m Germ an in 1 84 5 . The extra c 1 844 ' which was publ ished in trans latIOn ish Engl the from ns " is taken t h e c h apt er on "The Grea t Tow ' . . M oscow , J'n 1 9 6 2. . e, Hous g ishIn Publ s uage publ ished b y the Fore ign Lang
��:�
�
�
� �
�
?
* * * I n o w proceed to describe Manchester's worker districts. First o f all, there is the Old Town, which lies between the northern boundary o f the commercial district and the Irk. Here the streets, even the better ones, are narrow and winding, as Todd Street, Long Millgate, \Vithy Grove, and Shude Hill, the houses dirty, old, and tumble-down, and the construction of the side streets utterly horri ble . Going from the Old Church to Long Millgate, the stroller has a t once a row of old-fashioned houses at the right, of which not one has kept its original level; these are remnants o f the old pre-manu facturing M anchester, whose former inhabitants have removed with their
descendants into better-built
districts,
and
have left
the
houses, which were not good enough for them, to a working-class population strongly mixed with Irish blood. Here one is in an almost undisguised working-men's quarter, for even the shops and beerhouses hardly take the t rouble to exhibit a trifling degree of cleanliness. But all this is nothing in comparison with the courts ·and lanes which lie beh ind, to which access can be gained only through covered passages, in which no two human beings can pass a t the same time. O f t�l e irregular cramming together of dwellings in ways which defy all rational plan,
of the tangle i n which they are
crowded literally one upon the other, i t is impossible to convey an idea . And it is not the buildings surviving from the old times of Manchester which are to blame for this; the confusion has only 579
580
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
recently reached its height when every scrap of space left by the old way of building has been filled up and patched over u ntil not a foot of land is left to be further occupied. . To confirm my statement I have drawn here a small section of the plan of Manchester-not the worst spot and not one-tenth of the whole Old Town. This drawing will suffice to characterise the irrational manner in which the entire district was built, particularly the part near the Irk. The south bank of the Irk is here very steep and between fifteen and thirty feet hig h . On this declivitous hillside there are planted three rows of houses, of which the lowest rise directly out of the river, while the front walls of the hig h est stand on the crest of the hill in Long Millgate. Among them are mills on the river, in short, the method of construction is as crowded and disorderly h ere as in the lower part of Long Millgate. Right and left a m ultitude of cov·ered passages lead from the main street into numerous courts, a n d h e who turns in thither gets into a filth a n d disgusting grime, t h e equal of w h i c h i s not be found-especially i n t h e courts which lead down to the Irk, and which con tain unq ualifiedly the most horrible
dwellings w hich I have yet beheld. In one of these courts there stands directly at the entrance, at the end of the covered passage, a privy without a door, so dirty that the in habitants can pass into and out of the court only by passing through foul pools of stagnant urine and excrement. This is the first court on the Irk above Ducie . Bridge-in case any one shou l d care to look into it. Below it on the river there are several tanneries w hich fill the whole neighborhood with the stench of animal p utrefaction. Below Ducie Bridge the
Working-Class Manchester
581
only entrance to most of the houses is by means of narrow, dirty stairs and over heaps of refuse and filth . The first court below Ducie
Bridge, known as Allen's Court, was in such a state at the time of the cholera that the sanitary police ordered it evacuated, swept and disinfected with chloride of lime. Dr. Kay gives a terrible descrip tion of the state of this court at that time.1 Since then, it seems to
have been partially torn away and rebuilt; at least looking down . from Ducie Bridge, the passer-by sees several ruined walls and heaps
of debris with some newer houses . The view from this bridge, mer
cifully concealed from mortals of small stature by a parapet as high as a man, is characteristic for the whole district. At the bottom flows, or rather stagnates, the Irk,
stream, ful l of
a
narrow, coal-black, foul-smelling
debris and refuse, which it deposits on the shallower
right bank. In dry weather, a long string of the most disgusting
blackish-green slime pools are left standing on this bank, from the depths of which bubbles of miasmatic gas constantly arise and give forth a stench unendurable even on the bridge forty or fifty feet
above the surface of the stream. But besides this, the stream itself is checked every few paces by high weirs, behind which slime and refuse accumulate and rot in thick masses. Above the bridge are tan neries, bonemills, and gasworks, from which all drains and refuse find their way into the Irk, which receives further the contents of
all the neighbouring sewers and privies. It may be easily imagined,
therefore, what sort of residue the stream deposits. Below the bridge you look upon the piles of debris, the refuse, filth, and offal from the courts on the steep left bank; here each house is packed close behind its neighbour and a piece of each is visible, all black, smoky,
crumbling, ancient, with broken panes and window-frames. The background is furnished by old barrack-like factory buildings. On the lower right bank stands a long row of houses and mills; the second house being a ruin without a roof, piled with debris; the third stands so low that the lowest floor is uninhabitable, and there
fore without windows or doors. Here the background embraces the pauper burial-ground, the station of the Liverpool and Leeds rail . way, and, in the rear of this, the \Vorkhouse, the "Poor-Law Bas
tille" of Manchester, which, like a citadel, looks threateningly down
from behind its high walls and parapets on the hilltop, upon the working-people's quarter below.
Above Ducie Bridge, the left bank grows more flat and the right bank steeper, but the condition of the dwellings on both banks
grows worse rather than better. He who turns to the left here from
the main street, Long �1illgate, is lost; he wanders from one court
1. "The Moral and Physical Condition o f the Working-Class em ployed in the Cotton Manufacture i n Manchester." By James Ph. Kay, M.D. 2nd Ed.
1832. Dr. Kay confuses the working class in general with the factory work ers; otherwise, an excellent pamphlet. [Engels]
582
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
to another, turns countless corners, passes nothing but narrow, filthy nooks and alleys, until after a few minutes he has lost all clue, and
knows not whither to turn . Everywhere half or wholly ruined build
ings, some of them actually uninhabited, which means a great deal
here; rarely a wooden or stone floor to be seen in the houses, almost
uniformly broken, ill-fitting windows and doors, and a state of filth! iEverywhere heaps of debris, refuse, and offal; standing pools for gutters, and a stench which alone would make it impossible for a h uman being in any degree civilised to live in such a district. The newly-built extension of the Leeds railway, which crosses the Irk
here, has swept away some of these courts and lanes, laying others
completely open to view. Immediately under the railway bridge there stands a court, the filth and horrors of which surpass all the
others by far, just because it was hitherto so shut off, so secluded
that the way to it could not be found without a good deal of trou ble. I should never have discovered it myself, without the breaks made by the railway, though I thought I knew this whole region thoroughly. Passing along
a
rough bank, among stakes and washing
lines, one penetrates into this chaos of small one-storied, one roomed huts, in most of which there is no artificial floor; kitchen, living and sleeping-room all in one. In such a h ole, scarcely five feet
long by six broad, I found two beds-and such bedsteads and beds! -which, with a staircase and chimney-place, exactly filled the
room. In several others I found absolutely nothing, while the door stood open, and the inhabitants leaned against i t. Everywhere before the doors refuse and offal; that any sort of pavement lay underneath could not be seen but only felt, here and there, with the feet. This whole collection of cattle-sheds for human beings was
surrounded on two sides by h ouses and a factory, and on the third by the river, and besides the narrow stair up the bank, a narrow doorway alone led out into another almost equally ill-built, ill-kept labyrinth of dwellings. Enough! The whole side of the 'Irk is built in this way, a planless,
knotted chaos of houses, more or less on the verge of uninhab itableness, whose unclean interiors fully correspond with their filthy external surroundings. And how could the people be clean with no
proper opportunity for satisfying the most natural and ordinary wants? Privies are so rare here that they are either filled up every day, or are too remote for m ost of the inhabitants to use. How can people wash when they have only the dirty Irk water at hand, while
pumps and water pipes can be found in decent parts of the city alone? In truth, it cannot be charged to the account of these helots
of modern society if their dwellings are not more clean than the pig sties which are here and there to be seen among them. The land
lords are not ashamed to let dwellings like the six or seven cellars
W orking-CZass Manchester
583
on the quay directly below Scotland Bridge, the floors of which stand at least two feet below the low-water level of the Irk that flows not six feet away from them; or like the upper floor of the cor ner-house on the opposite shore directly above the bridge, where the ground-floor, utterly uninhabitable, stands deprived of all fittings for doors and windows, a case by no means rare in this region, when this open ground-ffoor is used as a privy by the whole neighbour hood for want of other facilities! If we leave the Irk and penetrate once more on the opposite side from Long �lillgate into the midst of the working-men's dwellings, we shall come into a somewhat newer quarter, which stretches from St. Michael's Church to \Vithy Grove and Shude Hill. Here there is somewhat better order. In place of the chaos of buildings, we find at least long straight lanes and alleys or courts, built according to a plan and usually square. But if, in the former case, every house was built according to caprice, here each lane and court is so built, without reference to the situation of the adjoining ones. The lanes run now in this direction, now in that, while every two minutes the wanderer gets into a blind alley, or on turning a corner, finds him self back where he started from; certainly no one who has not lived a considerable time in this labyrinth can find his way through it.
If I may use the word at all in speaking of this district, the venti
lation of these streets and courts is, in consequence of this confu sion, quite as imperfect as in the Irk region; and if this qt.�arter may, nevertheless, be said to have some advantage over that of the Irk, the houses being newer and the streets occasionally having gutters, nearly every house has, on the other hand, a cellar dwelling, which is rarely found in .the Irk district, by reason of the greater age and more careless construction of the houses. As for the rest, the filth,
debris, and offal heaps, and the pools ,in the streets are common to both quarters, and in the district now under discussion, another fea ture most injurious to the cleanliness of the inhabitants, is the mul titude of pigs walking about in all the alleys, rooting into the offal heaps, or kept imprisoned in small pens. Here, as in most of the working-men's quarters of Manchester, the pork-raisers rent the courts and build pig-pens in them. In almost every court one Or even several such pens may be found, into which the inhabitants of the court throw all refuse ,and offal, whence the swine grow fat; 'and the atmosphere, confined on all four sides, is utterly corrupted by
putrefying animal
and vegetable
substances.
Through
this
quarter, a broad and measurably decent street has been cut, Millers , . Street, and the background has been pretty successfully concealed. But if any one should be led by curiosity to pass through one of the numerous passages which lead into the courts, he will find this pig gery repeated at every twenty paces.
584
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
Such is the Old Town of �Ianchester, and description, I am forced to admit that instead of
on re-reading my being exaggerated,
it is far from black enough to convey a true impression of the filth, ruin, and uninhabitableness, the defiance of all considerations of cleanliness, ventilation, and health which characterise the construc
this single district, containing at least twenty to thirty thou And such a district exists in the heart of the second city of England , the first manufacturing city of the world. If any one wishes to see i n how little space a human being can move, how little air-and such air!-he can breathe, how little of civilisa tion of
sand inhabitants.
tion he may share and yet live, it is only necessary to travel hither. True, this is
the Old
Town, and the people of Manchester empha
sise the fact whenever any one mentions to them the frightful con dition of this Hell upon Earth; but
what
does that prove? Every
thing which here arouses horror and indignation is of recent origin, belongs to the industrial epoch. The couple of hundred houses, which belong to old by
their
original
Manchester,
inhabitants;
have been long since abandoned
the
industrial
epoch
alone
has
crammed into them the swarms of workers whom they now shelter; the industrial epoch alone has built up every spot between these old houses to win a hither
from
the
covering
for the masses whom it has conjured
agricultural
districts
and
from
industrial epoch alone enables the owners of these
Ireland;
cattlesheds
the to
rent them for high pr i c es to human beings, to plunder the poverty
of the workers, to undermine the health of thousands, in order that they alone, the owners, may grow has it become· possible that the
rich. In the industrial epoch alone worker scarcely freed from feudal
servitude could be used as mere material, a mere chattel; that he must let himself be crowded into a dwelling too bad for every other, which he for his hard-earned wages buys the right to let go utterly to ruin . This manufacture has achieved, which, without these work ers, this poverty, this slavery could not have lived. True, the original construction of this quarter was bad, little good could have been made out of it; but, have the landowners, has the municipality done anything to improve it when rebui-lding? On the contrary, wherever a nook or comer was free, a house has been run up; where a super fluous passage remained, it has been built up; the value of land rose with the blossoming out of manufacture, and the more it rose, the more madly was the work of building up carried on, without refer
ence
to the health or comfort of the inhabitants, with sole reference
to the highest possible profit on the principle that no hole is so bad
but that some poor creature must take it who can pay for nothing better. However, it is the Old Town, and with this reflection t h e bourgeoisie is comforted. Let us see, therefore, how is in the New Town.
much
better it
Working-Class Manchester
58 5
The New Town, known also as lrish'Town, stretches up a hill of clay, beyon � the Old Town, between the Irk and St'. George's Road, Here all the features of a city are lost. Single rows of houses or groups of sheets stand, here and there, like little villages on the naked, not even grassgrown clay s oil; the houses, or rather cottages, are in bad order, never repaired, filthy, with damp, unclean, cellar dwellings; the lanes are neither paved nor supplied with sewers, but harbour numerous colonies of swine penned in small sties or yards, or wandering unrestrained through the neighbourhood. The mud in the streets is so deep that there is never a chance, except in the dryest weather, of walking without sinking into it ankle deep at every step. In the vicinity of St. George' s Road, the separate groups of buildings approach each other more closely, ending in a continuation of lines, blind alleys, back lanes and courts, which grow more and more crowded and irregular the nearer they approach the heart of the town. True, they are h ere oftener paved or supplied with paved sidewalks and gutters; but the filth, the bad odor of the houses, and especially of the cellars, remain the same. * * *
The Class Struggles in France, 1848 .. 1850 KARL l\lARX France opened the round of revolutions of
1848
in Europe." The Parisian
workers figured importantly in the French revolutionary events from their opening in February, when King Louis Philippe was forced to abdicate, through the June workers' insurrection, which was suppressed with great ferocity by General Cavaignac's forces. December
10, 1848,
Later, the national election of
brought to the French Republic's presidency Napo
leon's nephew, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who in emperor by coup d'etat.
.
1851
made himself
In this most mordantly brilliant of his revolutionary pamphlets, first pub 1850 as a series of articles in Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Ma x not only coined such well-known phrases as "Revolutions are the locomoTIves of
:
lished in
history"; he portrayed the French workers' action as the debut of a coming Europe-wide proletarian revolution, and interspersed his narrative of France's 1848 revolution with passages of broader import that illumina e
�
key points in his thought. These passages have been gathered together the selection presented here .....
III
\Vith the exception of only a few chapters, every more important part of the annals of the revolution from 1 84 8 to 1 849 carries the
heading:
Defeat of the revolution!
\Vhat succumbed in these defeats was not the revolution. It was
the pre-revolutionary traditional appendages, results of social rela tionships which had not yet come to the point of sharp class antago
nisms-persons, illusions, conceptions, projects from which the rev olutionary party before the February Revolution was not free, from which it could be freed not by the a series of defeats.
victory of February,
but only by
In a word: the revolution made progress, forged ahead,. not by its immediate tragicomic achievements, but on the contrary by the cre
ation of a powerful, united counter-revolution, by the creation of an
opponent in combat with whom, only, the party of overthrow rip ened into a really revolutionary party. To prove this is the task of the following pages. *
*
*
.. See Priscilla Robertson, Revolutions 01 1848: A Social History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 195 2) for a general survey. The French experience is covered in chapters I-V I. .... F or a summary by Marx of the
events of 184 8 in France, see Section I of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, pp. 594-603, below. 1. A newspaper which appeared in Paris in 1 8 3 0-51.
586
The Class Struggles in France The
Provisional Government
587
which emerged from the February
barricades necessarily mirrored in its composition the different par
ties which shared in the victory. It could not be anything but a which together had over turned the July throne, but whose interests were mutua11y antago
compromise between the different classes
nistic. The great majority of its members consisted of representa tives of the bourgeoisie. The republican petty bourgeoisie was repre
sented by Ledru-Ro11in and Flocon, the republican bourgeoisie by the people from the
National,1 the dynastic opposition by Cremieux, Dupont de l'Eure, etc. The working class had only two representa tives, Louis Blanc and Albert. Fina11y, Lamartine in the Provisional
Government, this was at first no real interest, no definite class; this
was the February Revolution itself, the common uprising with its
i11usions, its poetry, its visionary content and its phrases. For the rest, the spokesman of the February Revolution, by his position and
his views, belonged to the
bourgeoisie.
If Paris, as a result of political centralisation, rules France, the
workers, in moments of revolutionary earthquakes, rule Paris. The
first act in the life of the Provisional Government was an attempt
to escape from this overpowering influence by an appeal from intox icated Paris to sober France. Lamartine disputed the right of the
barricade fighters to proclaim a republic on the ground that only the majority of Frenchmen had that right; they must await their votes, the Paris proletariat 'must not besmirch its victory by a usurpation.
The bourgeoisie allows the proletariat only one usurpation-that of fighting. *
*
*
Even the memory of the limited aims and motives which drove
the .bourgeoisie into the February Revolution was extinguished by the proclamation of the republic on the basis of universal suffrage.
Instead of only a few factions of the bourgeoisie, a11 classes of
French society were sudd�nly hurled into the orbit of political power, forced to leave the boxes, the stalls and the gallery and to
act in person upon the revolutionary stage! With the constitutional
monarchy vanished also the semblance of a state power independ
ently confronting bourgeois society as we11 as the whole series of subordinate struggles which this semblance of power ca11ed forth! By dictating the republic to tbe Provisional Government and
through the Provisional Government to the whole of France, the
proletariat stepped into the foreground forthwith as an independent
party, but at the same time challenged the whole of bourgeois
France to enter the lists against it. \Vhat it won was the terrain for
the fight for its revolutionary emancipation, but by no means this
emancipation itself.
In common with the bourgeoisie the workers had made the Feb..
588
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
ruary Revolution, and
alongside
the bourgeoisie they sought to
secure the advancement of their interest, just as they had installed a worker in the Provisional Government itself alongside the bourgeois
majority.
Organise labour!
But wage labour, that is the existing, the
bourgeois organisation of labour. \Vithout it there is no capital, no bourgeoisie, no bourgeois society. A Special Ministry of Labourl But
the Ministries of Finance, of Trade, of Public \Vorks-are not these the bourgeois Ministries of Labour? And alongside these a
proletarian
Ministry of Labour had to be a ministry of impotence,
a ministry of pious wishes, a Luxembourg Commission. Just as the
workers thought they would be able to emancipate themselves side
by side with the bourgeoisie, so they thought they would be able to
consummate a proletarian revolution within the national walls of
France, side by side with the remaining bourgeois nations. But
French relations of production are conditioned by the foreign trade of France, by her position on the world market and the laws thereof; how was France to break them without a European revolu
tionary war, which would strike back at the despot of the world
market, England?
As soon as it has risen up, a class in which the revolutionary
interests of society are concentrated finds the content and the mate
rial for its revolutionary activity directly in its own situation: foes to
be laid low, measures dictated by the needs of the struggle to be
taken; the consequences of its own deeds drive it on. It makes no theoretical inquiries into its own task. The French working class
J
had not attained this level; it was still incapable of accomplishing its own revolution. The development of the industrial proletariat is, in general, con-
ditioned by the development of the industrial bourgeoisie. Only under its rule does the proletariat gain that extensive national exist ence which can raise its revolution to a national one, and does it
itself create the modern means of production, which become just so many means of its revolutionary emancipation. Only its rule tears up the material roots of feudal society and levels the ground on which alone a proletarian revolution is possible. French industry is
more developed and the French bourgeoisie more revolutionary than that of the rest of the Continent. But was not the February
Revolution levelled directly against the finance aristocracy? This
fact proved that the industrial bourgeoisie did not rule France. The
industrial bourgeoisie can rule only where modern industry shapes all property relations to suit itself, and industry can win this power only where it has conquered the world market, for national bounds are inadequate for its development. But French industry, to a great extent, maintains its command even of the national market only
through a more or less modified system of prohibitive duties.
\Vhile, therefore, the French proletariat, at the moment of a revolu-
The Class Struggles in France
58 9
tion, possesses in Paris actual power and influence which spur it on to a drive beyond its means, in the rest of France it is crowded into separate, scattered i ndustrial centres, being almost lost in the supe. rior numbers of peasants and petty bourgeois. The struggle against capital in its developed, modern form, in its decisive aspect, the struggle of the industrial wage.worker against the industrial bour geois, is in France a partial phenomenon, which after the February days could so much the less supply the national content of the revo· lution, since the struggle against capital's secondary modes of exploitation, that of the peasant against usury and mortgages or of the petty bourgeois against the wholesale dealer, banker and manu facturer, in a word, against bankruptcy, was still hidden in the gen. eral uprising against the finance aristocracy. *
*
*
Thus in the approaching melee between bourgeoisie and proletar. iat, all the advantages, all the decisive posts, all the middle strata of society were in the hands of the bourgeoisie, at the sa me time as the waves of the February Revolution rose high over the whole Continent and each new post brought a new bulletin of revolution, now from Italy, now from Germany, now from the remotest parts of South.Eastern Europe, and maintained the general ecstasy of the people, giving it constant testimony of a victory that it had already forfeited. *
*
*
The workers were left no choice; they had to starve- or let fly. They answered on J une 22 with the tremendous insurrection in which the first great battle was fought between the two classes that split modern society. It was a fight for the preservation or annihila. han of the bourgeois order. The veil that shrouded the republic was torn asunder . It is well � nown how the workers, with unexampled bravery arid . mgenUIty, wlthout leaders, without a common plan, without means and, fat th e most part, lacking weapons, held i n check for five days the army, the Mobile Guard, the Paris National Guard and the National Guard that streamed in from the provinces . it is well known how the bourgeoisie compensated itself for the mortal anguish it suffered by unheard.of brutality, tnassacring over 3,000 prisoners. .
_
*
*
*
The official representatives of French democracy were steeped in republican ideology to such an extent that it was only some weeks later that they began to have an inkling of the significance of the Jun e fight. They were stupefied by the gunpower smoke in which their fantastic republic dissolved.
590
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
The Paris proletariat was forced into the June insurrection by the bourgeoisie. This sufficed to mark its doom. Its immediate, avowed needs did not drive it to engage in a light for the forcible overthrow of the bourgeoisie, nor was it equal to this task. The
Moniteur
had
to inform it officially that the time was past when the republic saw any occasion to bow and scrape to its illusions, and only its defeat convinced it of the truth that the slightest improvement in its posi tion remains a
utopia within
the bourgeois republic, a utopia that
becomes a crime as soon as it wants to become a reality. In place of
its demands, exuberant in form, but petty and even bourgeois still
in content, the concession of which it wanted to wring from the
February republic, there appeared the bold slogan of revolutionary
struggle:
Overthrow of the bourgeoisie! Dictatorship of the work
ing class!
By making its burial place the birthplace of the
lic,
bourgeois repub
the proletariat compelled the latter to come out forthwith in its
pure form as the state whose admitted object it is to perpetuate the
rule of capital, the slavery of labour. Having constantly before its eyes the scarred, irreconcilable, invincible enemy-invincible because his existence is the condition of its own life-bourgeois rule, freed from all fetters, was bound to turn immediately into
bourgeois terrorism.
\Vith the proletariat removed for the time
being from the stage and bourgeois dictatorship recognised officially,
the middle strata of bourgeois society, the petty bourgeoisie and the
peasant class, had to adhere more and more closely to the proletar
iat as their position became more unbearable and their antagonism
to the bourgeoisie more acute. Just as earlier they had to find the
cause of their distress in its upsurge, so now in its defeat. If the June insurrection raised the self-assurance of the bourgeoi
sie all over the Continent, and caused it to league itself openly
with the feudal monarchy against the people, who was the first victim of this alliance? The Continental bourgeoisie itself. The June
defeat prevented it from consolidating its rule and from brjnging
the people, half satisfied and half out of humour, to a standstill a.t the lowest stage of the bourgeois revolution.
Finally, the defeat of June divulged to the despotic powers of Europe the secret that France must maintain peace abroad at any price in order to be able to wage civil war at home. Thus the peo
ples who had begun the fight for their national independence were abandoned to the superior power of Russia, Austria and Prussia, but, at the same time, the fate of these national revolutions was made subject to the fate of the proletarian revolution, and they
were robbed of their apparent autonomy, their independence of
the great social revolution. The Hungarian shall not be free, nor the Pole, nor the I talian, as long as the worker remains a slave!
Finally, with the victories of the Holy Alliance, Europe has taken
The Class Struggles in France
5 91
on a form that makes every fresh proletarian upheaval in France directly coincide with a world war. The new French revolution is forced to leave its national soil forthwith and conquer the European terrain, on which alone the social revolution of the nineteenth cen tury can be accomplished. Thus only the June defeat has created all the conditions under which France can seize the initiative of the European revolution . Only after being dipped in the blood of the Tune insurgents did the tricolour become the flag of the European revolution-the red flag! And we exclaim: The revolution is dead!-Long live the revolution! '"
'"
'"
December 1 0, 1 848, was the day of the peasant insurrection.2 Only from this day does the February of the French peasants date . The symbol that expressed their entry into the revolutionary move ment, clumsily cunning, knavishly naive, doltishly sublime, a calcu lated superstition, a pathetic burlesque, a cleverly stupid anachron ism, a world-historic piece of buffoonery and an undecipherable hieroglyphic for the understanding of the civilised-this symbol bore the unmistakable physiognomy of the class that represents bar barism within civilisation. The republic had announced itself to this class with the tax collector; it announced itself to the republic with the emperor. Napoleon was the only man who had exhaustively rep resented the interests and the imagination of the peasant class, newly created in 1789. By writing his name on the frontispiece of the republic, it declared war abroad and the enforcing of its class interests at home. Napoleon was to the peasants not a person but a programme. \Vith banners, with beat of drums and blare of trum pets, they marched to the polling booths shouting: plus d'impots, a bas les riches, a bas la republique, vive l'Empereur! No more taxes, down with the rich, down with the republic, long live the emperor! Behind the emperor was hidden the peasant war. The republic that they voted down was the republic of the rich. December 1 0 was the coup d'etat o f the peasants, which over threw the existing government. And from that day on, when they had taken a government from France and given a government to her, their eyes were fixed steadily on Paris . For a moment active heroes of the revolutionary drama, they could no longer be forced back into the inactive and spineless role of the chorus . '"
'"
'"
In France, the petty bourgeois does what normally the industrial bourgeois would have to do; the worker does what normally would be the task of the petty bourgeois; and the task of the worker, who 2 . Marx refers t o the election o f Louis Napoleon, for whom the peasants voted en mas'se. [R. T.]
592
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
accomplishes that? No one. In France it is not accomplished; in France it is proclaimed. It is not accomplished anywhere within the national walls; the class war within French society turns into a world war, in which the nations confront one another. Accomplish ment begins only at the moment when, through the world war, the proletariat is pushed to the van of the people that dominates the world market, to the van of Englan d. The revolution, which finds h ere not its end, but its organisational beginning is n o short lived revolution . The present generation is like the Jews whom l\Ioses led through the wilderness. It has not only a new world to conquer, it must go under in order to make room for the men who are able to cope with a new world. *
*
*
So swiftly had the march of the revolution ripened conditions that the friends of reform of all shades, the most moderate claims of the middle classes, were compelled to group themselves round the banner of the most extreme party of revolution, round the red
flag. *
* *
*
*
*
Since it3 dreams of the peaceful achievement of i ts social
ism-allowing, perhaps, for a second February Revolution lasting a brief dar or so-the coming h istorical process naturally appears to it as an application of systems, which the thinkers of society, whether in companies or as individual inventors, devise or have devised. Thus they become the eclectics or adepts of the existing socialist
systems, of doctrinaire socialism, which was the theoretical expres sion of the proletariat only as long as it had not yet developed fur ther into a free h istorical movement of its own . While this utopia, doctrinaire socialism, which subordinates the total movement to one of its moments, which puts in place of common, social production the brainwork of individual pedants and, above all, in fantasy does away with the revolutionary struggle of the classes and its requirements by small conjurers' tricks or great sentimentality; while this doctrinaire socialism, which at bottom onl y idealises present society, takes a picture of it without shadows and wants to achieve its ideal athwart the realities of present society; while the proletariat surrenders this socialism to the petty bourgeoisie; while the struggle of the different socialist leaders among themselves sets forth each of the so-cal led systems as a pre tentious adherence to one of the transit points of the social revolu tion as against another-the proletariat rallies more and mQre round revolu�i?nary s�cialism, rouncfcclmmunism, for wl"1�ch. �E� bou�eoi sienas itself invented the name of Blanqui. This sociali�!1L is_the
declaration of the permanence of the revolutiOn, the cl as s .dict.ator3'.- M arx is r�ferring to such moderate Fr�nch 1848 events with his scheme. of
forms of socialism as that of Louis Blanc, who figured prominently in the
"social workshops." [R. T.]
The Class Struggles in Franc e
593
of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition., distinctions generallY",to the abolition of all the relations of " pro duction on which they rest, 'to the ab oiit ion of aIHhe so cial rela tiohS that correspond to these relations of production, to th� revolutionis.i ng 6f all flie'ideas lhal resillr'fi-oIri: these soda.r.r. 0iatlo�s..��;-The scope of this exposition does not· permit of developing the subject further.
ship
'Of-cliiss
*
*
*
Just as the period of crisis occurs later on the Continent than in England, so does that of prosperity. The original process always takes place in England; it is the demiurge of the bourgeois cosmos. On the Continent, the different phases of the cycle through which bourgeois society is ever speeding anew occur in secondary and ter tiary form . First, the Continent exported incomparably more to England than to any other country. This export to England, how ever, in turn depends on the position of England, particularly with regard to the overseas market. Then England exports to the overseas lands incomparably more than the entire Continent, so that the quantity of Continental exports to these lands is always dependent on England's overseas exports at the time. \Vhile, therefore, the crises first produce revolutions on the Continent, the foundation for these is, nevertheless, always laid in England. Violent outbreaks must naturally occur rather in the extremities of the bourgeois body than in its heart, since the possibility of adjustment is greater here than there. On the other hand, the degree to which the Continen tal revolutions react on England is at the same time the barometer which indicates how far these revolutions really call in question the bourgeois conditions of life, or how far they only hit their political formations . \Vith this general prosperity, in which the productive forces of bourgeois society develop as luxuriantly as is at all possible within bourgeois relationships, there can be no talk of a real revolution. Such a revolution is only possible in the periods when both these factors, the modern productive forces and the bourgeois productive forms come in collision with each other. The various quarrels in which the representatives of the individual factions of the Conti� nental party of Order now indulge and mutually compromise them selves, far from providing the occasion for new revolutions are, on the contrary, possible only because the basis of the relationships is momentarily so secure and, what the reaction does not know, so bourgeois. From it all attempts of the reaction to hold up bourgeois development will rebound just as certainly as all moral indignation and all enthusiastic proclamations of the democrats. A new revolu tion is possible only in consequence of a new crisis. It is, however, just
as
certain as this crisis. *
*
.
*
.
,t.
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte KARL l\1ARX
This pamphlet, a stylistic masterpiece, shows Marx in his most brilliant form as a social and political historian, treating actual historical events those
leading
up
to
Louis
Bonaparte's
coup
d'etat of
December
2,
1 8 5 1-from t h e viewpoint of t h e materialist conception of history. In a preface to the second edition, he himself said it was the intention of the work to "demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circum stances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero's part." Since Louis Bonaparte's rise and rule have been seen as a forerunner of the phenomenon that was to become known in the twentieth century as fascism, Marx's interpretation of it is o f interest, among other ways, as a sort of prologue to later Marxist thought on the nature and meaning of fascism. The Eighteenth Brumaire was written by Marx in late 1 8 5 1 and early 1 8 5 2, and originally appeared in 1 8 52 in a magazine entitled Die Revolu· tion, published in New Y o r k . The most important sections-the first and the last_appear here.
I Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and perso�ages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add : the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Caussidiere for Danton Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Mountain of 1848 to 1851 - f or th � Mountain of 179 3 to 1795, the Nephew for the Uncle. And the same caricature oCJ:urs in the circumstances in which the second edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire is taking place.l 1. On t h e Eighteenth Brumaire (ac cording to the ca lendar introduced in the period o f the first French bourgeois revolution), or November 9, 1799, Na poleon I carried out the coup d'etat whereby as First Consul he concentrat ed supreme power in his hands; in 1804 he declared himself em peror. By "the .
second edition of the Eighteenth Bru maire," Marx means the coup d'etat accomplished by Louis Bonaparte, the nephew o f Napoleon I , on Decem ber 2 1851. The "Mountain" refers to th � Social Democratic bloc in the National Assembly. CR. T.]
59'1
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
595
Men make their own history, but they do not make i t j ust as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by them selves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmit ted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionising themselves and things, in creating something entirely new, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their serv ice and bprrow from them names, battle slogans and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-hon oured disguise and this borrowed language. Thus Luther donned the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789 to 1814 draped itself alternately as the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1 848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, in turn, 1 7 89 and the revolutionary tradition of 1793 to 1795. I n like manner the beginner who has learnt a new language always translates i t back into his mother tongue, but he has assimilated the spirit of the new language and can produce freely in i t only when he moves in it without remembering the old and forgets in it his ancestral tongue. Consideration of this world-historical conjuring up of the dead reveals at once a salient difference. Camille Desmoulins; Danton, Robespierre, Saint-Just, Napoleon, the heroes, as well as the parties and the masses o f the old French Revolution, performed the task of their time in Roman costume and with Roman phrases, the task of releasing and setting up modern bourgeois society. The first ones knocked the feudal basis to pieces and mowed off the feudal heads which had grown from it. The other created inside France the conditions under which free competition could first be developed, the parcelled landed property exploited, the unfettered productive power of the nation employed, and outside the French borders he everywhere swept the feudal formations away, so far as was necessary to furnish bourgeois society in France with· a suitable up-to-date environment on the European Continent. The new social formation once established, the antediluvian Colossi disappeared and with them the resurrected Romans-the Brutuses, Gracchi, Publicolas, the tribunes, the senators and Caesar himself. Bourgeois society in its sober reality had begotten its true interpret ers and mouthpieces in the Says, Cousins, Royer-Collards, Benjamin Constants and Guizots; its real military leaders sat behind the office desks, and the hogheaded Louis XVIII was its political chief. \Vholly absorbed in the production of wealth and in the peaceful struggle of competition, it no longer comprehended that ghosts from the days of Rome had watched over its cradle. But unheroic as bourgeois society is, yet it had need of heroism, of sacrifice, of
596
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
terror, of civil war and of national battles to bring it into being. And in the classically austere traditions of the Roman Republic its gladiators found the ideals and the art forms, the self-deceptions
that they needed in order to conceal from themselves the bourgeois limitations of the content of their struggles and to keep their pas sion at the height of the great historical tragedy. Similarly, at another stage of development, a century earlier, Cromwell and the
English people had borrowed speech, passions and illusions from
the Old Testament for their bourgeois revolution.2 \Vhen the real aim had been achieved, when the bourgeois transformation of Eng lish society had been accomplished, Locke supplanted Habakkuk. The awakening of the dead in those revolutions therefore served the purpose of glorifying the new struggles, not of parodying the
old; of magnifying the given tasks in imagination, not of taking flight from their solution in reality; of finding once more the spirit
of revolution, not of making its ghost walk again. From 1848 to 1851 only the ghost of the old revolution walked, from Marrast, the republicain en gants jaunes,3 who disguised him
self as the old Bailly, to the adventurer who hides his trivially repulsive features under the iron death mask of Napoleon. An entire people, which had imagined that by a revolution it had increased its
power of action, suddenly finds itself set back into a dead epoch
and, in order that no doubt as to the relapse may be possible, the old data again arise, the old chronology, the old names, the old edicts, which have long become a subject of antiquarian erudition, and the old henchmen, who had long seemed dead and decayed. The nation appears to itself like that mad Englishman in Bedlam, who fancies that he lives in the times of the ancient Pharaohs and daily bemoans the hard labour that he must perform in the Ethio
pian mines as a gold digger, immured in this subterranean prison, a dimly burning lamp fastened to his head, the overseer of the slaves
behind him with a long whip, and at the exits a confused mass of barbarian mercenaries, who understand neither the forced labourers
in the mines nor one another, since they have no common speech. "And all this is expected of me," groans the mad Englishman, "of
me, a free-born Briton, in order to make gold -for the old Pharaohs."
"In order to pay the debts of the Bonaparte family," sighs the French nation. The Englishman, so long as he was in his right mind, could not get rid of the fixed idea of making gold. The French, so long as they were engaged in revolution, could not get
rid of the memory of Napoleon, as the election of December 10,
1848,4 proved. From the perils of revolution their longings went 2, 1851, was the
back to the flesh-pots of Egypt, and December 2. The bourgeoisie was allied with the new nobility against tbe monarchy. tbe feudal nobility. and the ruling church. [Marx]
3. Republican in yellow gloves. 4. The day Louis Bonaparte was elected president of the republic.
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis B onaparte
597
answer. They have not only a caricature of the old Napoleon, they have the old Napoleon himself, caricatured as he would inevitably appear in the middle of the nineteenth century. The socia l revolution of the nineteenth century cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself, before it has stripped off all superstition in regard to the past. Earlier revolutions required world-historical recollections in order to drug themselves concerning their own content. In order to arrive at its content, the revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead. There the phrase went beyond the content; here the content goes beyond the phrase. The February Revolution was a sudden attack, a taking of the old society by surprise, and the people proclaimed this un hoped for stroke as a world-historic deed, opening the new epoch . On Decem ber 2 the February Revolution is conjured away by a card-sharper's trick, and what seems overthrown is no longer the monarchy; it is the liberal concessions that were wrung from it by century-long struggles . Instead of society having conquered a new content for itself, the state only appears to have returned to its oldest form, to the shamelessly simple domination of the sabre and the cowl . This is the answer to the coup de main of February 1 8 48, given by the coup de tete of December 1 8 5 1 . Easy come, easy go. Meanwhile the interval has not passed by unused . During the years 1 848 to 1 8 5 1 French society has made up, and that by an abbreviated, because revolutionary, method, for the studies and experiences which, in a regular, so to speak, text-book development would have had to precede the February Revolution, if the latter was to be more than a disturbance of the surface. Society now seems to have fallen back behind its point of departure; it has in truth first to create for itself the revolutionary point of departure, the situation, the relationships, the conditions, under which modern revolution alone becomes serious. Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth century, storm more swiftly from success to success; their dramatic effects outdo each other; men and things seem set in sparkling brilliants; ecstasy is the everyday spiri t : but they are short- lived; soon they have attained their zenith, and a long depression lays hold of society before it learns soberly to assimilate the results of its storm and stress period . Proletarian revolutions, on the other hand, like those I of the nineteenth century, criticise themselves constantly, interrupt themselves continually in their own course, come back to the appar ently accomplished in order to begin it afresh, deride with unmerci ful thoroughness the inadequacies, weaknesses and paltrinesses of their first attempts, seem to throw down their adversary only in order that he may draw new strength from the earth and rise again more gigantic before them, recoil ever and anon from the indefinite
598
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
prodigiousness of their own aims, until the situation has b een cre ated which makes all turning back impossible, and the conditions themselves cry out : H i c R hodus, h i c salta! Hier ist die Rose, hier tanze! 5 For the rest, every fairly competent observer, even if he h a d not fol lowed t h e cou rse of French development step by step, m u s t h a v e had a presentiment t h a t a terrible fi a s c o was in store f o r t h e revolu tion . It was enough to hear the self-complacent howl of victory with which l\fessieurs the Democrats congratulated each other on the gracious conseq uences of May 2,
1 8 5 2 .6 In their minds May 2 ,
1 8 5 2 , h a d become a fixed idea, a dogma, like t h e day o n which C h rist should reappear and the millennium begin, in the minds of the Chiliasts .7 A s ever, wea kness had taken refuge in a belief in miracles, had fancied the enemy overcome when he was only con j ured away in imagination, and lost all understanding of the present in a passive g lorification of the future that was in store for it and of t h e deeds i t had in petto,S but merely did not want to carry out as yet . Those heroes, who seek to disprov-e their demonstrated incapac ity by mutually offering each other their sympathy and getting together in a crowd, had tied up their bundl es, collected th eir laurel wreat hs i n advance a n d were j ust then engaged in discounting o n the exchange market the rep u b lics in partibus,9 for which they h a d already thoughtfully organised t h e government personnel with all the calm of their unassuming disposition . December 2 struck them like a thunderbolt from
a
clear sky, and the peoples that in epochs
of pusillanimous depression gladly let their inward apprehension be drowned by the loudest bawlers will perchance have convinced themselves that the times are past when the cackle of geese could save the Capito l . 1 The Consti tution, the Nationa l Assembly, the dynastic parties,2 the blue and the red republicans,s the heroes of Africa,4 the thuns. "Here is R hodes, leap here! Here i s the rose, d a n c e here ! " T h e w o r d s a r e from a fable by Aesop a b o u t a braggart who claimed he could produce witnesses to prove he had once made a remark able leap i n Rhodes, to which claim h e received the reply : "Why c i t e witnesses i f it i s true? Here is R l:odes, leap here ! " That is, "Show u s right here what you can d o . " The German para phrase of the Greek quotation ( R hodus means rose) was used by Hegel in the pre face to his Philosophy 01 Right. 6. The day on which new presidential elections were to b e held. Louis Bona parte would have had to retire on this
day, as the constitution did not permit anyone to be elected to the presidency for a second time, except after an in terval of four years. 7. The adherents o f a n ancient Chris tian sect, who believed i n the second coming of Christ and i n the establish ment of the millennium, a thousand years of paradise o n earth. 8. I n reserve. 9. In partibus in/idelium : l i terally, " i n t h e country o f t h e infidel s . " An expres sion often used by Marx and Engels to describe emigre governments formed abroad without regard to the real situ ation i n a coun try.
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
599
der f rom the platform, t h e sheet lightning of the daily press, the entire literature, the political names and the intellectual reputa tions, the civil law and penal code,
the liberte, egalite, frater nite and the second of � lay 1 8 5 2-all have vanished like a phan tasmagoria be fore the spell of a man whom even his enemies do not
make out to be a magician. Universal suffrage seems to have sur vived only for a moment, in order that with its own hand it may
make its last will and testament before the eyes of all the world and
declare in the name of the people itself : Everything that exists has
this much worth, that it will perish.
It is not enough to say, as the French do, that their nation has
been taken by surprise . A nation and a woman are not forgiven the
u nguarded hour in which the first adventurer that came along could violate them. The riddle is not solved by such terms of speech, but
merely formulated in another way. It remains to be explained how a nation of thirty-six millions can be surprised and delivered unresist
ing into captivity by three high class swindlers.
Let us recapitulate in their general outlines the phases that the French Revolution has gone through from February 24, 1 84 8 , to
December 1 8 5 1 Three main periods are unmistakable: the February period; the
period of the constituting of the republic or of the Constituent National Assembly, May 4, 1 84 8 , to May 29, 1 849; the period of the constitutional republic or of the Legislative National Assembly, May 29, 1 849, to December 2 , 1 8 5 l . The first period, from February 24, or the overthrow o f ' Louis Philippe, to May 4, 1 84 8 , the meeting of the Constituent Assem bly, the February period proper, may be described as the prologue of the Revolution. I ts character was officially expressed in the fact
that the government improvised by it declared itself to be provi
sional and, like the government, everything that was instigated,
attempted or enunciated during this period, proclaimed itself to b e provisional. Nothing a n d nobody ventured t o lay claim t o the right of existence and of real action . All the elements that had prepared
or determined the Revolution, the dynastic opposition, the republi
can bourgeoisie, the democratic-republican petty bourgeoisie an d
the social-democratic workers, provisionally found their place in the February government.
I t could not be otherwise. The February days originally intended
l . An old Roman story tells that once, when Rome was besieged, the sacred geese i n the Roman fortress, the Capi tol, wakened the gar rison with their cack l in g ; thanks to this, the garrison was able to beat off the attack of the enemies who had stolen up in the night.
2 . The Legitimists, who supported the Bourbons, and the Orleanists. 3. The blue (bourgeois) and the red (socialist) republican parties. 4. This refers to the generals distin guished for their savage deeds i n Af rica during the conquest of Algeria ( Cavaignac, Changarnier and other s ) .
600
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
an electoral reform, by which the circle of the politically privileged among the possessing class itself was to be widened and the exclusive domination of the aristocracy of finance overthrown. \Vhen it came to the actual conflict, however, when the people mounted the barri cades, the National Guard maintained a passive attitude, the army offered no serious resistance and the monarchy ran away, the repub lic appeared to be a matter of course. Every party construed it in its own sense. Having been won by the proletariat by force of arms, the proletariat impressed its stamp on it and proclaimed it to be a social republic. There was thus indicated the general content of the modern revolution, which stood in most singular contradiction to everything that, with the material at hand, with the degree of edu cation attained by the masses, under the given circumstances and relationships, could be immediately realised in practice. On the other hand, the claims of all the remaining elem ents that had par ticipated in the February Revolution were recognised by the lion's share that they obtained in the government. In no period do we therefore find a more confused mixture of high-flown phrases and actual uncertainty and clumsiness, of more enthusiastic striving for innovation and more deeply rooted domination of the old routine, of more apparent harmony of the whole society and more profound estrangement of its elements . \Vhile the Paris proletariat still revelled in the vision of the wide prospects that had opened before it and indulged in seriously-meant discussions on social problems, the old powers of society had grouped themselves, assembled, reflected and found an unexpected support in the mass of the nation, the peasants and petty bourgeois, who all at once stormed on to the political stage, after the barriers of the July monarchy had fallen . The second period, from May 4, 1 848, to the end of May 1 849, is the period of the constitution, of the foundation of the botlrgeois republic. Directly after the February days the dynastic opposition had not only been surprised by the republicans, the republicans by the socialists, but all France had been surprised by Paris. The National Assembly, which had met on :May 4, 1 848, having emerged from the national elections, represented the nation . It was a living protest against the presumptuous aspirations of the Febru ary days and was to reduce the results of the Revolution to the bourgeois scale. In vain the Paris proletariat, which immediately grasped the character of this National Assembly, attempted on May 1 5, a few days after it met, forcibly to deny its existence, to dissolve it, to disintegrate once more into its constituent parts the organic form in which the proletariat was threatened by the reactionary spirit of the nation. As is known, May 1 5 had no other result save
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonapa rte
60 1
that of removing Blanqui and his comrades, that is, the real le aders of the proletarian party [the revolutionary commun ists) , 5 from the public stage for the entire duration of the cycle we are consider ing. The bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe can only be followed by the bourgeois republic, that is, if a limited section of the bour geoisie formerly ruled in the name of the king, the whole of the bourgeoisie will now rule in the name of the people. The demands of the Paris proletariat are utopian nonsense to which an end must be put. To this declaration of the Constituent National Assembly the Paris proletariat replied with the Tune Insurrection, the most colossal event in the history of European civil wars . The bourgeois republic triumphed. On its side stood the aristocracy of finance, the industrial bourgeoisie, the middle class, the petty bour geois, the army, the lumpenproletariat organised as the Mobile Guard, the intellectual lights, the clergy, and the rural population . On the side of the Paris proletariat stood none but itself. More than three thousand insurgents were butchered after the victory, and fifteen thousand were transported without trial. \Vith this defeat the proletariat passes into the background of the revolutionary stage. It attempts to press forward again on every occasion, as soon as the movement appears to make a fresh start, but with ever decreased expenditure of strength and always more insignificant results. As soon as one of the social strata situated above it gets into revolutionary ferment, it enters into an alliance with it and so shares all the defeats that the different - parties suffer one after another. But these subsequent blows become steadily weaker, the more they are distributed over the entire surface of society. Its more important leaders in the Assembly and the press successively fall vic tims to the courts, and ever more equivocal figures come to the fore. In part it throws itself into doctrinaire experiments, exchange banks and workers' associations, hence into a movement in which it re nounces the revolutionising of the old world by means of its own great, combined resources, and seeks, rather, to achieve its salw,ttion behind society's back, in private fashion, within its limited con d i tions of existence, and hence inevitably suffers shipwreck. It seems
to be unable either to rediscover revolutionary greatness in itself or to win new energy from the alliances newly entered into, until all classes with which it contended in June themselves lie prostrate beside it. But at least it succumbs with the honours of the great, world-historic struggle; not only France, but all Europe trembles at the June earthquake, while the ensuing defeats of the upper classes 5. Here and elsewhere the square brackets in the text denote passages of
the fi rs t edition omitted in subsequent editions.
e
602
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
are so cheaply bought that they require bare-faced exaggeration by the victorious party to b e able to pass for events a t all and become the more ignominious the further the defeated party is removed from the proletariat. The defeat of the June insurgents, to be sure, had now prepared and levelled the ground on which the bourgeois republic coul d be founded and built up, but it h a d shown a t" the same time that in E u rope there are other questions involved than that of "republic or monarchy." It had revealed that here bourgeois republic signifie s the unlimited despotism of one class over other classes . It had proved that in lands with an old civilisation, with a developed for mation of classes, with modern conditions of prod uction and with an intellectual consciousness into which all traditional ideas have been a bsorbed by the work of centuries, the republic signifies in
general only the p olitical form of the revolution of bourgeois society and n o t its conservative form of life, as, for example, in the United States of North America, where, though classes, indeed, a lready exist, they have not yet become fixed, but continually change and interchange their elements in a constant state o f flux, where the modern means of production, i nstead of coinciding with a stagnant surplus population, rather supply the relative defi ciency of heads and hands and where, finally, the feverishly youthful movement of material production, that has a new world to make its own, has left neither time nor opportunity for abolishing the old spirit world . During the June days all classes a n d parties had uni ted in the
Party of Order against the proletarian cIass as the party of anarchy, of socialism, of communis m . They had "saved" society from "the enemies of society . " They had given out the watchwords of the old society, "property, family, religion , order," to their army as pass words and had proclaimed to the counter-revolutionary crusaders :
" I n this sign you will conque r ! " From that moment, as soon as one of the n umerous parties which had gathered under this sign against the June insurgents seeks to hold the revolutionary battlefield in its own class interests it goes down before the cry : "Prope rty, family, religion, order . " Society is saved just as often as the circle of its rulers contracts, a s a Ihore exclusive i n terest i s maintained against a wider one. Every demand of the simplest bourgeois financial reform, of the most ordinary liberalism, of the most formal rep ubl icanism, of the most i nsipid democracy, is sim ultaneously castigated as an "attempt on society" and stigma tised as "social i s m . " And, finally, the high priests of "re ligion and order" themselves a re driven wtih kicks from their Pythian tripods, hauled out o f their beds in the darkness of night, put in prison-vans, thrown into dungeons or sent into exile; their temple i s razed to the ground, their mouths are
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
603
sealed, their pens broken, their law torn to pie � es in t �e name of religion, of property, of family, of order. BourgeOIs fanatIcs for ord� r . are shot down on their balconies by mobs of drunken soldiers, their domestic sanctuaries profaned, their houses bombarded for amuse ment-in the name of property, of family, of religion and of order. Finally the scum of bourgeois society forms the holy phal� nx . the TUllenes . order and the hero Crapulinsky6 installs himself III as the "saviour of society."
at
*
*
*
VII On the threshold of the February Revolution, the social republic appeared as a phrase, as a prophecy. In the June days of 1 848, it was drowned in the blood of the Paris proletariat, but it haunts the subsequent acts of the drama like a ghost . The democratic republic makes its appearance . On June 1 3 , 1 849, it is dissipated together with its petty bourgeois, who take to their heels, but in its flight i t blows i t s own trumpet w i t h redoubled boastfulness . T h e parliamen tary republic, together with the bourgeoisie, takes possession of the entire stage; it lives out its existence to the fun, but December 2, 1 8 5 1 , buries it to the accompaniment of the cry of terror of the roy alists in coalition : " Long live the republic! " The French bourgeoisie offered resistance t o the domination of the working proletariat; it has brought the lumpenproletariat to domination, with the chief of the Society of December 1 0 a t the head. The bourgeoisie kept France in breathless fear of the future terrors of red anarchy; Bonaparte discounted this future for it when, on December 4, he had the eminent bourgeois of the Boulevard Montmartre and the Boulevard des Ita liens shot down at their win dows by the army of order, whose enthusiasm was inspired by li quor. It apotheosised the sword; the sword rules it. It destroyed the revolutionary press; its own press has been destroyed. It placed pub� lie meetings under police supervision; its salons are under the super vision of the police. It disbanded the democratic National Guard; its own National Guard has been disbanded. It imposed the state o f siege; the state o f siege has been imposed o n it. I t supplanted the juries by military commissions; its juries are supplanted by military commissions; it subjected public education to the priests; the priests subject it to their own education . It transported people without 6 . The h e r o o f Heine's poem, Two Knights. I n t h i s character , Heine r i d i
c u l e s t he spendthri ft Polish nohleman ( H C rapulinsk y" comes from the French
greedines s ) . crapule -glutton y, word Here Marx means Louis Bonapart e. 7. The residence of the head of the governme nt i n France.
604
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
trial ; it is transported without tria l . It suppressed every stirring i n society by means of the state power; every stirring in i ts society is repressed by m e a n s of t h e state powe r . O u t of enthusiasm . for i ts purse, it rebelled against its own politicians and men of letters; its politicians and men of letters are swept aside, b ut its purse is plun dered now that its mouth has been gagged and its pen broken . The bourgeoisie never wearied of crying out to the revolution wha t Saint Arsenius cried out to the Christians : "Fuge, tace, quiesce!" Flee, be silent, keep q uie t ! B onaparte cries to the bourgeoisie : "Fuge, tace,
quiesce !" Flee, be silent, keep q u iet! The French bourgeoisie had long since found the solution to Na poleo n 's dilem m a : "Dans cinquante ans [,Europe sera republicaine
ou cosaque."8 It had found the solution to it in the "republique cosaque. " No Circe, b y means of black magic, has distorted that work of art, the bourgeois republic, into a monstrous shape. That repu blic has nothing but the semblance of respectabi lity. The pre sen t-day France was contained in a fi n i shed state within the parlia mentary republic . It only required a bayonet thrust for the bubble to burst and the monster to spring forth before our eyes . [The immediate .aim of the February Revolution was to over throw the Orleans dynasty and the section of the bourgoisie that ruled during its reign . This aim was only attained on December
2,
1 8 5 1 . The immense possessions of the house of Orleans, the real basis of its i n fl uence, were now confiscated and what had been ex pected after the February Revolution came to pass after the Decem ber co up-prison, fl ight, dismissa l, banishment, disarming, d erision for the men who since 1 8 3 0 had wearied France with their renown . B ut under Louis Philippe only a part of the commercial bourgeoisie ruled . Its other sections formed a dynastic and a republican opposi tion or were a l together d isfranchised . Only the parliamen tary repub lic accepted all sections of the commercia l bourgeoisie i nto its sphere of state. Under Louis Philippe, moreover, the commercial bourgeoisie excJ uded the landowning bou rgeoisie. Only the parlia mentary republic set them side by side, with equal righ t s , married the July monarchy to the Legitimist monarch y and fused two epochs of property rule into one. Under Louis Philippe, the fa voured section of the bou rgeoisie concealed its rule under cover of the crown; in the parliamentary republic the rule of the bou rgeoisie, after it had u n i ted all i ts elements and ex tended its realm to be the real m of its class, revealed its u ncovered hea d . Thus the revolution i tself had first to create the form in which the rule of the bourgeoi sie could obtain its broadest, most general and final expression, and the � efore could also be overthrown without being able to a rise Ii
aga m .
8. "Within fifty years Europe will be republican o r Cossack."
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bo naparte
605
Only now was the judgment, passed in February, executed on the Orleanist bourgeoisie, that is, on the most vital section of the French bourgeoisie. Now it was defeated in its parliament, its bar, its commercial courts, its provincial representative bodies, its notar ies, its university, its tribune and its tribunals, its press and its litera ture, its administrative revenues and its court fees, its army pay and i ts state incomes, in its mind and in its body. Blanqui had made the disbandment of the bourgeois guards the first demand on the revo lution, and the bourgeois guards, who in February offered the revo lution their hand in order to hinder its progress, vanished from the scene in December. The Pantheon itself becomes transformed into an ordinary church . \\Tith the final form of the bourgeois regime th e spell is likewise broken which transfigured its initiators of the eighteenth century into saints .] 9 Why did not the Paris proletariat rise in revolt after December? The overthrow of the bourgeoisie had as yet only been decreed; the decree had not been carried out . Any serious insurrection o f the proletariat would at once have put fresh life into the bourgeoisie, would have reconciled it with the army and would have ensured a second June defeat for the workers. On December 4 the proletariat was incited to fight by the bour geois and the small shopkeepers. On the evening of that day several legions of the National Guard promised to appear, armed and uni formed, on the scene of action. For the bourgeois and the small shopkeepers had found out that in one of his decrees of December 2 B onaparte abolished the secret ballot and enjoined them to record their "yes" or "no" in the official registers after their names. The re sistance of December 4 intimidated Bonaparte . During the night he caused placards to be posted on all the street corners of Paris, an nouncing the restoration of the secret ballot. The bourgeois and the small shopkeepers believed that they had gained their end. Those who failed to appear next morning were the bourgeois and the small shopkeepers. By a coup de main during the night of December 1 to 2, B ona� parte ha'd robbed the Paris proletariat of its leaders, the barrica de commanders. An army without officers, made disinclined to fight under the banner of the Montagnards by the memories of June 1848 and 1 849 and l\-f ay 1 8 5 0, it left to its vanguard, the secret so� cieties, the task of saving the insurrectionary honour of Paris, which the bourgeoisie had so spinelessly surrendered to the soldiers that, later on, Bonaparte could sneeringly give as his motive for disarm ing the National Guard-his fear that its arms would be turned against itself by anarchists! 9 . T h e sentences i n square brackets were omitted by Engels from the third
German edition restrictions.
because o f censorship
606
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
"C'est le triomphe complet et de-fi. nitif du socialisme ! " l Thus Guizot characterised December 2 . B u t i f t h e overthrow of t h e parliamentary republic contains within itsel f t h e germ o f the triumph of the proletarian revolution, its i m m ediate a n d obvious re sult was the victory of B onaparte over parliament, of the executive power over the legislative power, of force without phrases over the force of phrases. In parliament the nation made its general will the law, that is, it made the law of the ruling class its general will . B e fore the executive power it renounces all will of its own and surren ders itse lf to the superior orders of something alien, of authority. The executive power, in contrast to the legislative power, expresses the heteronomy2 o f the
nation,
in
contrast
to
its
autonomy .
France, therefore, seems to have escaped the despotism of a class only to fall back beneath the despotism of an individual and, what i s more, beneath the authority of a n individual without authority. The struggle seems to be settled in such a way that all c lasses, equally impotent and equally mute, fall on their knees before the clu b . B u t t h e revolution i s thorough-going . I t is still i n process of pass ing through purgatory. It does its work methodically. B y December 2,
1 851, i t had completed one half of i ts preparatory work; it i s now
completing the other half.
First it perfected the parliamentary
power, in order to b e able to overthrow i t . Now that it has attained this, i t perfects the
executive power,
reduces i t to its purest expres
sion, isolates it, sets it up against itself as the sole target, in o rder to concentrate all its forces of destruction against it. And when it h a s d o n e this second h a l f o f i t s preliminary work, E u rope will l e a p from her seat and exultantly exclai m : Well grubbed, old mol e ! 3 This executive power with i t s enormous bureaucratic organisation, with
its artificial
a n d military
state machinery embracing wide
strata, with a host of officials numbering half a mil lion, besides a n a r m y of a n o t h e r h a lf m i l lion, t h i s appalling parasitic g r o w t h , which enmeshes the body of French society like a net and chokes all its pores, sprang up i n the days of the absolute monarchy, with th e decay of the feudal system, which it helped to haste n . The seig niorial privileges o f the landowners and towns became tra nsformed into so many attributes of the state power, the feudal dign i taries into paid officials and the motley pattern of
conflicting medireval
plenary powers into the regulated plan of a state authority, whose work i s divided and centralised a s in a factory. The first French Revolution, with its task o f breaking all local, territorial, urban and 1 . "This is the complete and final triumph of soc ialism." 2. Dependence on foreign authority. 3. A reference to Shakespeare's H am/et.
The actual words Canst work i ' the worthy pioneer ! "
are : earth
"Old mol e ! so fast? A
The Eighteenth Brumaire o f Louis B onaparte
607
provincial independent powers in order to create the bourgeois unity of the nation, was bound to develop what the absolute mon archy had begun-centralisation, but at the same time the extent, the attributes and the agents of governmental authority. Napoleon perfected this state machinery. The Legitimist monarchy and the J uly monarchy added nothing but a greater division of labour, grow ing in the same measure that the division of labour within bour geois society created new groups of interests, and, therefore, new material for state administration. Every common interest was straightaway severed from society, counter-posed to it as a higher, general interest, snatched from the self-activity of society's members and made an object of governmental activity from the bridge, the school-house and the communal property of a village community to the railways, the national wealth and the national university of France . The parliamentary republic, finally, in its struggle against the revolution, found itself compelled to strengthen, along with the repressive measures, the resources and centralisation of governmen tal power. All the revolutions perfected this machine instead. of smashing it. The parties that contended in turn for domination re garded the possession of this huge state edifice as the principal spoils of the victor. But under the absolute monarchy, during the first revolution, and under Napoleon, bureaucracy was only the means of preparing the class rule of the bourgeoisie . Under the Restoration, under Louis Philippe and under the parliamentary republic, i t was the instru ment of tbe ruling class, however much it strove for power o f its own . Only under the second Bonaparte does the state seem to have made itself completely independent. As against bourgeois society! the state machine has consolidated its position so thoroughly that the chief of the Society of December 1 0 suffices for its head, an ad venturer blown in from abroad, elevated on the shield by a drunken soldiery, which he has bought with liquor and sausages, and which he must continually ply with sausage anew. Hence the downcast de" spair, the feeling of most dreadful humiliation and degradation that oppresses the breast of France and makes her catch her breath .. She feels herself dishonoured. And yet the state power is not suspended in mid-air. Bonaparte represents a class, and the most numerous class of French society at that, the small peasants. Just as the Bourbons were the dynasty of large landed property and just as the Orleans were the dynasty of money, so the Bona partes are the dynasty of the peasants, that is, the mass of the French people. Not the Bonaparte who submitted to the bourgeois parliament, but the Bonaparte who dispersed it is the chosen of the
608
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Cent.ury
peasa ntry. For three years the towns h a d succeeded in falsi'fying the meaning of the election of December
10
an d in chea ting t h e peas
a n ts out of the restoration of the Em pire. The election of Decem ber 1 0, 1 848, was consu mmated only by the coup d'etat of Decem ber 2 , 1 8 5 1 . The small peasants form a vast mass, the members of which live i n similar conditions, but without entering into manifold relations with one another . Their mode of production isolates them from one another, instead of bringing t h e m i n t o mutual intercourse. The iso lation i s increased by France's bad means of communication and by the poverty of the peasants. Their field of production, the small
holding, admits of no division of la bour in i ts cultivation, no appli cation of science a n d , therefore, no multiplicity of development, no diversity of talents, no wealth of social relationships . Each individ u a l peasant family is a lmost self-sufficient; i t itse lf directly produces the major part of its consumption and thus acquires its means of l i fe more through exchange with nature than in intercourse w i t h so ciety. The small holding, the peasa n t and his family; a longside them another small holding, another peasant and another fami ly. A few score of these make up a village, and a few score of vil lages make up a Depa rtment. In this way, the great mass of the French nation is formed by simple addition of homologous magnitudes, m u c h as potatoes in a sack form a sackful of potatoes . In so far a s mi llions of families l i v e under economic conditions of existence that divide their mode of life, their i nterests and their culture from those of the other classes, and put them in hostile contrast to the l a tter,
they form a class . In so far as there is merely a local inte rconnection among these sma l l peasan ts, and the identity of their in terests be gets n o unity, no national union and n o poli tical organisation, they do not form a class. They are consequently incapable of enforcing their class interest in their own name, whether t hrough a parlia ment or through a convention . They cannot represent themselves,
they must be represented. Their represen tative must at the same time appear as their master, as a n authority over them, as an unlim i ted governmental power that protects them against the other classes and sends them the rain and the sunshine from a bove . The political influence of the sma l l peasants, therefore, finds its final expressipn in the executive power su bordinating society to itsel f. Historica l tradition gave rise t o the faith of the French peasants i n the miracle that a man named Napoleon would bring all the glory back to them . An9 an individual was found who gives himself out as the man because h e bears the name of Napoleon, in conse
quence of the C o d e Napoleon,4 which lays down that la recherche 4. The French code of civil l a w , promulgated on March 3 1 ,_ 1 8 0 4 .
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
609
de la paternite est interdite.5 After being a vagabond for twenty years and after a series of grotesque adventures, the legend finds ful filment and the man becomes Emperor of the French. The fixed idea of the nephew was realised, because it coincided with the fixed idea of the most numerous class of the French people. B u t, it may be objected, what about the peasant risings in half of France, the hounding of masses of peasants by the army, the mass incarceration and transportation of the peasants? Since Louis XIV, France has experienced no similar persecution of the peasants "on account of demagogic intrigues." But l e t there be no misunderstanding. The Bonaparte dynasty represents not the revolutionary, but the conservative peasant; not the peasant that strikes out beyond the condition of his social exist ence, the small holding, but rather the peasant who wants to con solidate it; not the country folk who want to overthrow the old order through their own energies linked up with the towns, but on the contrary those who, in stupefi.ed bondage to this old order, want to see themselves with their small holding saved and favoured by the ghost of the empire. It represents not the enlightenment, but the superstition of the peasant; not his judgment, but his prejudice; not his future, but his past; not his modern Cevennes, 6 but his modern Vendee.7 The three years' rigorous rule of the parliamentary republic had freed a part of the French peasants from the Napoleonic illusion and had revolutionised them, even if only superficially, but the bourgoisie violently repressed them, as often as they set themselves in motion . Under the parliamentary republic the modern and the traditional consciousness of the French peasant contended for mas tery. The contest proceeded in the form of an incessant struggle between the schoolmasters and the priests. The bourgeoisie struck down the schoolmasters. For the first time, the peasants made efforts to behave independently in the face of governmental activ ity. This was shown in the continual conflict between the mayors· and the prefects. The bourgeoisie deposed the mayors . Finally, dur ing the period of the parliamentary republic, the peasants of differ ent localities rose against their own offspring, the army . The bourgeoisie punished them with states of siege and distraints on their goods. And this same bourgeoisie now cries out about the stupidity of the masses, the vile multitude. that has betrayed it to B onaparte. It has itself forcibly strengthened the imperialisms of S. Inquiry into fatherhood i s forbidden. 6. I n Cevennes (Southern France, Lan guedoc ) , at the beginning o f the eigh teenth century, there was an uprising o f peasants under the slogans, "Down with taxes ! Freedom o f faith ! "
7 . The Vendee peasantry was the most politically backward a t the time of the fi rs t French bourgeois revolution ; it counter supported the royalist revolution. 8 . In the sense of imperial sentiments.
_
61 0
Society and Politics i n the Nineteenth Century
the peasant class, it h el d fast to the cond itions that form the birth place of this peasant religion . The bourgeoisie, to be sure, i s bound to fear the stupidity of the masses, as l o n g as they remain conserva tive,
and
the insight
of the
masses,
as
soon
as
they become
revolutionary. In the risings after the coup d'etat, a part of the French peas ants protested, arms in hand, against their own vote of D ecember 1 0, 1 84 8 . The school they had gone through since 1 848 had sharp
ened their wits . B ut they had made themselves over to the under world of history; history held them to their word, and the majority •
was still so bound that in precisely the reddest Departments the peasa n t population voted open ly for Bonaparte .9 I n its view, the National Assembly had hindered his progress . He had now merely broken the fetters that the town had imposed on the will of the countryside. In some parts the peasants even entertained the gro tesq ue notion of a Conventionl side by side with a Napoleon . After
the
first revolution h a d transformed
the peasants from
semi-vil leins into freeholders, Napoleon confirmed and regulated the cond i tions on which
they could exploit undisturbed the soil of
France which h a d only j ust come into their p ossession a n d slake their youthful passion for property. But what is now causing th e r u i n of t h e French peasa n t is h i s dwarf h ol d ing i tself, t h e division of the land, the form of property which Napoleon consolida ted in F rance . It i s precisely the material conditions which made the feu dal peasan t into a small peasant and Napoleon into an emperor. Two generations have sufficed to prod uce the inevitable resul t : pro gressi ve deterioration of agriculture, progressive inde btedness of the agriculturist . The "Napoleonic" form of property, which a t the be ginning of the nineteen
h century was the condi tion for the l i bera in
tion and enrichment of the French country folk, has developed
the course of this century as the law of their enslavement an d pau perisation . And it is j ust this law w h i c h is the first of the "idees na
poleoniennes" which the second B on aparte h a s to uphold . If he still shares with the peasants the ill usion that the cause of their ruin
is to be soug ht not in this small holding property i tself but o u tside it in the influence of secondary causes, then his experiments will burst like soap bubbles when they come into contact with the rela tions of production. The economic development of this sma l l holding property has 9, . In t he plebiscite t h a t ra t i fi e d the coup d'etat, by voting Bon lparte back as President with a huge majority. 1 . The Convention. The revolutionary representative assembly o f the first Fren c h bourgeois revol ution. I t was convened i n September 1 7 9 2 , after the
overthrow of the monarchy and the es tablishment o f the repu b l i c . A fter the expulsion of the Girondins ( M ay 3 1 -J u n e Z , 1 89 3 ) , the majority of its mem bers were lacobins-the represent a t i ves of the revolutionary petty bour geoisie.
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
61 1
turned the relation of the peasants to the remaining classes of so ciety completely upside down. Under Napoleon, the fragmentation of the land in the countryside supplemented free competition and the beginning of big industry in the towns . [Even the favouring of the peasant class was in the interest of the new bourgeois order. This newly-created class was the many-sided extension of the bour geois regime beyond the gates of the towns, its realisation on a na tional scale.j 2 This class was the ubiquitous protest against the landed aristocracy which had just been overthrown . [If it was favoured above all, it, above all, offered the point of attack for the restoration of the feudal lands .1 The roots that this small holding property struck in French soil deprived feudalism of all nutriment. Its landmarks formed the natu ral fortifications of the bourgeoisie against any coup de main on the p art of its old overlords . But in the course of the nineteenth century the feudal lords were replaced by urban usurers; the feudal obliga tion that went with the land was replaced by the mortgage; aristo cratic landed property was replaced by bourgeois capital. The small h olding of the peasant is now only the pretext that allows the cap italist to draw profits, interest and rent from the soil, while leaving it to the tiller of the soil himself to see how he can extract his wages . The mortgage debt burdening the soil of France imposes on the French peasantry payment of an amount of interest equal to the annual interest on the entire B ritish national debt. Small-holding property, in this enslavement by capital to which its development inevitably pushes forward, has transformed the mass 'of the French nation into troglodytes. Sixteen million peasants ( including women and children ) dwell in hovels, a large number of which have but one opening, others only two and the most favoured only three. And windows are to a house what the five senses are to the head. The bourgeois order, which at the beginning of the century set the state to stand guard over the newly arisen small holding and manured it w i th laurels, has become a vampire that sucks out its blood and marrow and throws thcm into the alchemistic cauldron of capital . The Code Napoleon is now nothing but a codex of distraints; forced sales and compulsory auctions. To the four million (includ ing children, etc . ) officially recognised paupers, vagabonds, crimi nals and prostitutes in France must be added five millions who hover on the margin of existence and either have their haunts 'in the countryside itself or, with their rags and their children, contin ually desert the countryside for the towns and the towns for the countryside. The interests of the peasants, therefore, are no longer, 2 . The sente nces i n square brackets on this and the following pages were omitted by Engels from the third German
edition tions.
because
of
censorship
restric-
612
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
as under Napoleon, in accord with, but in opposition to the inter ests of the bourgeoisie, to capital. Hence the peasants find their nat ural ally and leader in the urban proletariat, whose task is the over throw of the bourgeois order. But strong and unlimited governmen t -and this is the second "idee napoleonienne," which the second Napoleon has to carry out-is called upon to defend by force this "material" order. This "material order" also serves as the catchword in all Bonaparte's proclamations against the rebellious peasants. Besides the mortgage which capital imposes on it, the small hold ing is burdened by taxes. Taxes are the source of life for the bu reaucracy, the army, the priests and the court, in short, for the whole apparatus of the executive power. Strong government and heavy taxes are identical . By its very nature, small holding property forms a suitable basis for an all-powerful and innumerable bureau cracy. It creates a uniform level of relationships and persons over the who le surface of the land . Hence it also permits of uniform action from a supreme centre on all points of this uniform mass. It annihi lates the aristocratic intermediate grades between the mass of the people and the state power. On all sides, therefore, it calls forth the direct interference of this state power and the intervention of its immediate organs. Finally, it produces an unemployed surplus popu lation for which there is no place either on the land or in the towns, and which accordingly reaches out for state offices as a sort of respectable alms, and provokes the creation of state posts . [ Under Napoleon this numerous governmental personnel was not merely immediately productive, inasmuch as, through the means of compulsion of the state, it executed on behalf of the newly arisen peasantry, in the form of public works, etc., what the bourgeoisie could not yet accomplish by way of private industry. State taxes were a necessary means of compulsion to maintain ex change between town and country. Otherwise, the owner of a dwarf holding would in his rustic self-sufficiency have severed his connec tion with the townsman, as in Norway and a part of Switzerland. ] By the new markets which he opened at the point of the bayo net, and by the plundering of the Continent, Napoleon repaid the compulsory taxes with interest. These taxes were a spur to the in dustry of the peasant, whereas now they rob his industry of its last sources of aid and complete his powerlessness to resist pauperism . And an enormous bureaucracy, well-dressed and well-Jed, is the "idee napoleonienne" which is most congenial of all to the sec ond Bonaparte. How could it be otherwise, seeing that alongside the actual classes of society, he is forced to create an artificial caste, for which the maintenance of his regime becomes a bread-and-but ter question? Accordingly, one of his first financial operations was the raising of officials' salaries to their old level again and the crea tion of new sinecures .
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
613
Another "idee napoleonienne" i s the domination o f the priests as a means of government. But if in its accord with society, in its dependence on natural forces and its subjection to the authority which protected it from above, the small holding that had newly come into being was naturally religious, the small holding that is ru ined by debts, at odds with society and authority, and driven be yond its own limitations, naturally becomes irreligious . Heaven was q uite a pleasing accessory to the narrow strip of land just won, more particularly as it makes the weather; it becomes an insult as soon as it is thrust forward as substitute for the small holding. The priest then appears as only the anointed bloodhound of the earthly police -another "idee napol €o n ienne [ whose mission under the second Bonaparte is to keep watch over, not the enemies of the peasant regime in the towns, as under Napoleon, but the enemies of Bona parte in the country] . On the next occasion, the expedition against Rome will take place in France itself, but in a sense opposite to that of M. de Montalembert.3 Finally, the culminating point of the " i dees napoleoniennes" is the preponderan ce of the arm)'. The army was th e point d'honneur of the peasants, it was they themselves transformed into heroes, de fending their new possessions against the outer world, glorifying their recently won nationality, plundering and revolution ising the world. The uniform was their own state dress; war was their poetry; the small holding, extended and rounded off in imagination, was their fatherland, and patriotism the ideal form of the property sense. B ut the enemies against whom the French peasant has now to defend his property are not the Cossacks; they are the hussiers4 and the tax collectors . The small holding lies no longer in the so called fatherland, but in the register of mortgages . The army itself is no longer the flower of the peasant youth; it is the swamp-flower of the peasant lumpenproletariat. It consists in large measure of rempla�ants, of substitutes, j ust as the second Bonaparte is himself only a rempla�ant, the substitute for Napoleon. It now performs its deeds of valour by hounding the peasants in masses like chamois, by discharging gendarme duties, and when the internal contradictions of his system chase the chief of the Society of December 10 over . the French border, his army, after some acts of brigandage, will reap, not laurels, but thrashings . One sees : all idees napoleoniennes are the ideas of the undevel oped small holding in the freshness of its youth: for the small hold ing that has outlived its day they are a n absurdity. They are only -
3. Montalembert, t h e h e a d o f th e miIi" tan t Catholic Party, spoke, during the d i scussions on the repeal o f universal suffrage, on the necessity o f undertak ing a Roman expedition "within" France-meaning support of the
Roman Pope and the Catholic clergy. Marx, o n the other hand, is speaking o f an expedition against Rome i n the sense of a struggle against the clergy. 4 . Bailiffs.
61 4
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
the hallucinations of its death struggle, words that are reduced to phrases, spirits reduced to ghosts. But the parody of imperialism was necessary to free the mass of the French nation from the wlOight of tradition and to work out in pure form the opposition between the state power and society. With the progressive undermining of this small holding property, the state structure erected upon it collapses. The state centralisation that modern society requires arises only on the ruins of the military-bureaucratic governmental machinery which was forged in opposition to feudalism . [The demolition of the state machine will not endanger central isation. Bureaucracy is only the low and brutal form of a centralisa tion that is still afHicted with its opposite, with feudalism. On com ing to despair of the Napoleonic Restoration, the French peasant parts with his belief in his small holding, the entire state edifice erected on this small holding falls to the ground and the prole tarian revolution obtains that chorus without which its solo song in all peasant nations becomes a swan song. 1 French peasant relationships provide us with the answer to the riddle of the general elections of December 2 0 and 2 1 , which bore the second Napoleon up Mount Sinai, not to receive laws, but to give them. [To be sure, on those fateful days the French nation committed a deadly sin against democracy, which is on its knees and prays daily : Holy universal suffrage, intercede for u s ! Naturally, the be lievers in universal suffrage do not want to renounce a miraculous power that has accomplish ed such great things in regard to them selves, which has transformed Bonaparte II into a Napoleon, a Saul into a Paul and a Simon into a Peter. The spirit of the people speaks to them through the ballot-box as the god of the prophet Ezekiel spoke to the marrowless bones : "Haec dicit dominus deus ossibus suis: Ecce, ego intromittam in vos spiritum et vivetis." ''Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones : Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live ."] l\'1anifestly, the bourgeoisie had now no choice but to elect Bona parte. [Despotism or anarchy. Naturally, it voted for despotism.] When the puritans a t the Council of Constance complained of the dissolute lives of the popes and wailed about the necessity of moral reform, Cardinal Pierre d'Ai1ly thundered to them : "Only the devil in person can now save the Catholic Church, and you ask for an gels . " In like manner, after the coup d'etat, the French bourgeoisie cried : Only the chief of the Society of December 1 0 can now save bourgeois society! Only theft can now save property; only perjury, religion; only bastardy, the family; only disorder, order!, As the executive authority which has made itself an independent power, Bonaparte feels it to be his mission to safeguard "civil
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bo naparte
61 5
order." B ut the strength of this civil order lies in the middle class . H e looks on himself, therefore, as the representative of th e middle class and issues decrees in this sense . Nevertheless, h e is somebody solely due to the fact that he has broken the political power of this middle class and daily breaks it anew. Consequently, he looks on himself as th e adversary of the political and literary power of the middle class . But by protecting its material power, h e generates its p olitical power anew. The cause must accordingly be kept alive; but the effect, where it manifests itself, must be done away' with . But this cannot pass off without slight confusions of cause and . effect, since in their interaction both lose their distinguishing features. New decrees, that obliterate the border-line. At the same time, Bo naparte looks on himself as the representative o f the peasants, and of the people in general, against the bourgeoisie, who wants to make the lower classes of the people happy within the frame of bourgeois society. New decrees, that cheat the " true socialists" of their statecraft in advance. But, above all, Bonaparte looks on him self as the chief of the Society of December 1 0, as the representa tive of the lumpenproletariat to which he himself, his entourage, his government and his army belong, and for which the prime consider ation is to benefit itself and draw California lottery prizes from the state treasury. And he makes good his position as chief of the So ciety of December 10 with decrees, without decrees and despite de crees . This contradictory task of the man explains the contradictions of his government, the confused groping hither and thither which seeks now to win, now to humiliate first one class and then another and arrays all of them uniformly against him, whose practical uncer tainty forms a highly comical contrast to the imperious categorical style of the government decrees, a style which is copied obse quiously from the Uncle . Industry and trade, hence the business affairs of the middle class, are to prosper in hot-house fashion under the strong government. Granting of innumerable railway concessions . But the Bonapartist lumpenproletariat is to enrich itself. Trickery with the railway con cessions on th e Bourse by those previously initiated. But no capital is forthcoming for the railways. Obligation of the Bank to make advances on railway shares. B ut, at the same time, the Bank is to be exploited 'for personal ends and therefore must be cajoled. Release of the Bank from the obligation to publish its report weekly. Leon ine agreement5 of the Bank with the government. The people are to be given employment. Inauguration of public works. But the public works increase the obligations of the people in respect of S.
Meaning an a greement by which one
gets the lion's share.
61 6
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
taxes. Therefore, reduction of the taxes by an onslaught on the ren tiers,6 by conversion of the five per cent bonds to four-and-a-half per cent. B ut, once more, the middle class must receive a sop. Therefore doubling of the wine tax for the people, who buy it en detail,7 and halving of the wine tax for the middle class, who drink it en gros .8 Dissolution of the actual workers' associations, but promises of miracles of association in the future. The peasants are to be helped . Mortgage banks, that expedite their getting into debt and accelerate the concentration of property. But these banks are to be used to make money out of the confiscated estates of the house of Orleans. No capitalist wants to agree to this condition, which is not in the decrees, and the mortgage bank remains a mere decree, etc., etc. Bonaparte would like to appear as the patriarchal benefactor of all classes. But he cannot give to one class without taking from an other. Just as at the time of the Fronde it was said of the Duke of Guise that he was the most obligeant man in France because he had turned all his possessions into his partisans' obligations to him, so Bonaparte would fain be the most obligeant man in France and turn all the property, all the labour of France into a personal obliga tion to himself. He would like to steal - the whole of France in order to be able to make a present of h er to France or, rather, in order to be able to buy France anew with French money, for as the chief of the Society of December 10 he must needs buy what ought to be long to him. And all the state institutions, the Senate, the Council of State, the legislative body, the Legion of Honour, the soldiers' medals, the wash-houses, the public works, the railways, the etat major9 of the National Guard to the exclusion of privates, and the confiscated estates of the house of Orleans-all become parts of the institution of purchase. Every place in the army and in the govern ment machine becomes a means for purchase. B ut the most impor tant feature of this process, whereby France is taken in order to give to her, is the percentages that find their way to the head and the members of the Society of December 1 0 during the turnover. The witticism with which Countess L., the mistres s of 1\1 . de Morny, characterised the confiscation of the Orleans estates : "C' est le pre mier vol de l'aigle," l is applicable to every flight of the eagle, which is more like a raven. He himself and his adherents call out to one another daily like that Italian Carthusian admonishing the miser who, with boastful display, counted up the goods on which he could yet live for years to come : " Tu fai canto sopra i beni, 6. Persons drawing income f rom honds and i n vestments. 7. Retail. 8. Wholesale.
9.
General Sta ff. 1. " I t is the first flight (theft) of the eagle." Vol means flight and theft.
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis B onaparte
61 7
bisogna prima far il conto sopra gli anni."2 Lest they make a mis take in the years, they count the minutes . At the court, in the min istries, at the head of the administration and the army, a crowd of fellows pushes forward, of the best o f whom it can be said that no one knows whence he comes, a noisy, disreputable, rapacious B oheme that dresses itsel f in gallooned coats with the same carica ture of dignity as the high dignitaries of Soulouque. One can visualise clearly this upper stratum of the Society of December 1 0, if one reflects that Veron-ereveZS is its preacher of morals and Granier de eassagnac its thinker. When Guizot, at the time of his ministry, utilised this Granier on a hole-and-corner newspaper against the dynastic opposition, he used to boast of him with the quip : He' e s t Ie roi des droles," "he i s the king of buffoons." One would do wrong to recall the Regency of Louis XV in connection with Louis Bonaparte's court and clique. For "often already, France has experienced a government of mistresses; but never before, a government of hommes entretenus. "4 Driven by the contradictory demands of his situation, and, at the same time, like a conjurer under the necessity of keeping the public gaze fixed on himself, as Napoleon's subsitute, by constant surprises, hence of executing a c o up d'etat en miniature every day, Bona parte throws the entire bourgeois economy into confusion, lays hands on everything that seemed inviolable to the revolution of 1 848, makes some tolerant of revolution, others desirous o f revolu tion, and produces actual anarchy in the name of order, while at the same time he divests the whole state machine of its halo, profanes it and makes it at once loathsome and ridiculous. The cult of the Holy Coat of Treves 5 h e duplicates at Paris in the cult of the Na poleonic imperial mantle. But i f the imperial mantle finally falls on the shoulders of Louis Bonaparte, the iron statue of Napoleon will crash from the top of the Vendome column. 2. Th o u co un tes t thy goods, thou shou l d s t fi rst co u n t th y years. 3. In his work, Bal zac delineates the thoroughly di ssolute Parisian philistine in the character of C r e v e l , which he d r a w s after t h e model o f Dr. Veron, the proprietor o f the
La Cousilte Bette,
Constitutioltnel. [Marx]
4.
Kept men. The words quoted are the , words of Madame Girardin. [Marx] _ 5 . One of the "sacred" relics- ( " the vestment of the Lord " ) , exhibited i n the Treves cathedral in 1 8 44 f o r public
worship.
The Civil War In France KARL �1ARX This, the l a s t o f M a r x ' s g r e a t political pamphlets, w a s composed d u r i n g t h e P a r i s Revolution of September, 1 8 7o-May, 1 8 7 1 , and r e a d by M a r x t o the General Council of the International Working Men's Association on May
3 0 , 1 87 1 , only two days after the last resistance of the Paris Com f, une's
fighters was overcome. In addition to providing an immensely viVId and trenchant account of the Commune and its fate, the Address was a major contribution to Marxist theory of the state and of the revolutionary process itself from the political point of view. It treated the Paris Commune as the short-lived but momentous first example in history of a "dictatorship of the proletari a t . " In preparing the docu ment for publ ication as a separate pam phlet on the twentieth anniversary of the Paris Commune in 1 89 1 , Engels included in the publication two shorter addresses by Marx on the Franco Prussian War, i n which the Paris Revolution had its origi n . Parts III and
IV of the pamphlet are reprinted here.
Introduction I did not anticipate that I would be asked to prepare a new edi tion of the Address of the General Council of the International on The Civil War in France, and to write an introduction to it. There fore I can only touch briefly here on the most important points. I am prefacing the longer work mentioned above by the two shorter Addresses of the Gener a l Council on the Franco-Prussian · War. In the first place, because the second of these, which itself cannot be fully understood in full without the first, is referred to in The Civil War. But also because these two Addresses, likewise drafted by Marx, are, no less than The Civil War, outstanding examples of the author's remarkable gift, first proved in The Eight eenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, for grasping clearly the char acter, the import and the necessary consequences of great historical events, at a time when these ev e nts are still in progress before our eyes or have only just taken place. And, finally, because today we in Germany are still having to endure the consequences which Marx predicted would follow from these events. 61 8
The Civil War in France
61 9
Has that which was declared in the first Address not come to pass : that if Germany's defensive war against Louis Bonaparte degenerated into a war of conquest against the French people, all the misfortunes which befell Germany after the so-called wars of liberationl would revive again with rene wed intensity? Have we not had a further twenty years of Bismarck's rule,. the Exceptional Law and Socialist-baiting taking the place of the prosecutions of dema gogues, with the same arbitrary action of the police and with liter ally the same staggering interpretations of the law? And has not the prediction been proved to the letter, that the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine would "force France into the arms of Russia, " and that after this annexation Germany must either become the avowed servant of Russia, or must, after some short re spite, arm for a new war, and, moreover, "a race war against the combined Slavonic and Roman races"? Has not the annexation of the French provinces driven France into the arms of Russia? Has not Bismarck for fully twenty years vainly wooed the favour of the tsar, wooed it with services even more lowly than those which little Prussia, before it became the "first Power in Eu rope, " was wont to lay at Holy Russia 's feet? And is there not every day still hanging over our heads the Damocles' sword of war, on the first day of which all the chartered covenants of princes will be scattered like chaff; a war of which nothing is certain but the absolute uncertainty of its outcome; a race war which will subject the whole of Europe to devastation by fifteen or twenty million armed men, and which is not raging already only because even the strongest of the great mili tary states shrinks before the absolute incalculability of its final result? All the more is it our duty to make again accessible to the German workers these brilliant proofs, now half-forgotten, of the far sightedness of international working-class policy in 1 870. What is true of these two Addresses is also true of The Civil War in France. On May :z. 8, the last fighters of the Commune suc cum bed to superior forces on the slopes of Belleville; and only two d ays later, on May 3 0, Marx read to the General Council the work in which the historical significance of the Paris Commune is deline ated in short, powerful strokes, but with such trenchancy, and above all such truth as has never again been attained in all the mass of literature on this subject. Thanks to the economic and political development of France since 1 789, Paris has been placed for the last fifty years in such a position that no revolution could break out there without assuming a proletarian character, that is to say, without the proletariat, which had bought victory with its blood, advancing its own 1 . The wars against Napoleon I i n
1 8 1 3- 1 5 .
620
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
demands after victory. ' These demands were more or less unclear and even confused, corresponding to the state of development reached by the workers of Paris at the particular period, but in the last resort they all amounted to the abolition of the class antago nism between capitalists and workers. It is true that no one knew how this' was to be brought about. But the demand itself, however indefinitely it still was couched, contained a threat to the existing order of society; the workers who put it forward were still armed; therefore, the disarming of the workers was the first commandment for· the bourgeois, who were a t the helm of the state . Hence, after every revolution won by the workers, a new struggle, ending with the defeat of the workers. This happened for the first time in 1 848. The liberal bourgeois of the parliamentary opposition held banquets for securing a reform of the franchise, which was to ensure supremacy for their party. Forced more and more, in their struggle with the government, to appeal to the people, they had gradually to yield precedence to the radical and republican strata of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoi sie. But behind these stood the revolutionary workers, and since 1 8 3 0 these had acquired far more political independence than the bourgeois, and even the republicans, suspected. At the moment of the crisis between the government and the opposition, the workers begari street-fighting; Louis Philippe vanished, and with him the franchise reform; and in its place arose the republic, and indeed one which the victorious workers themselves designated as a "social" republic. No one, however, was clear as to what this social republic was to imply; not even the workers themselves. B ut they now had arms and were a power in the state . Therefore, as soon as the bour geois republicans in control felt something like firm ground under their feet, their first aim was to disarm the workers. This took place by driving them into the insurrection of June 1 848 by direct breach of faith, by open defiance and the attempt to banish the unem ployed to a distant province. The government had taken care to have an overwhelming superiority of force. After five days' heroic struggle, the workers were defeated. And then followed a blood-bath among the defenceless prisoners, the like of which has not been seen since the days of the civil wars which ushered in the downfall of the Roman republic. It was the first time that the bourgeoisie showed to what insane cruelties of revenge it will be goaded the moment the proletariat dares to take its stand agai!Jst the bourgeoi sie as a separate class, with its own interests and demands. And yet 1 848 was only child's play compared with the frenzy of the bour geoisie in 1 87 1 . Punishment followed hard at heel . If the proletariat was not yet able to rule France, the bourgeoisie could no longer do so. At least
The Civil War in France
62 1
not at that period, when the greater part of it was still monarchi cally inclined, and it was divided into three dynastic parties and a fourth, republican party. I ts internal dissensions allowed the adven turer Louis Bonaparte to take possession of all the commanding points-army, police, administrative machinery-and, on December 2, 1 8 5 1 , to explode the last stronghold of the bourgeoisie, the National Assembly. The Second Empire began-the exploitation of France by a gang of political and financial adventurers, but at the same time also an industrial development such as had never been possible under the narrow-minded and timorous system of Louis Philippe, with the exclusive domination of only a small section of the big bourgeois i.e. Louis Bonaparte took the political power from the capitalists under the pretext of protecting them, the bourgeois, from the workers, and on the other hand the workers from them; but in return his rule encouraged speculation and industrial activity -in a word, the upsurgence and enrichment of the whole bourgeoi sie to an extent hitherto unknown. To an even greater extent, it is true, corruption and mass thievery developed, clustering around the imperial court, an d drawing their heavy percentages from this enrichment. But the Second Empire was the appeal to French chauvinism, was the demand for the restoration of the frontiers of the First Empire, which had been lost in 1 8 14, or at least those of the First Republic. A French empire within the frontiers of the old mon archy and, in -fact, within the even more amputated frontiers of 1 8 1 5-such a thing was impossible for any length of time . Hence the necessity for occasional wars and extensions of frontiers . But no extension of frontiers was so dazzling to the imagination of the French chauvinists as the extension to the German left bank of the Rhine. One square mile on the Rhine was more to them than ten in the Alps or anywhere else . Given the Second Empire, the demand for the restoration of the left bank of the Rhine, either all at once or piecemeal, was merely a question of time. The time came with the Austro-Prussian War of 1 866; cheated of the anticipated "territorial compensation" by Bismarck and by his own over-cun� ning, h esitant policy, there was now nothing left for Napoleon but war, which broke out in 1 870 and drove him first to Sedan, and thence to Wilhelmsh6he.2 The necessary consequence was the Paris Revolution of Septem ber. 4, 1 870. The empire collapsed like a house of cards, and the republic was again proclaimed. B ut the enemy was standing at the gates; the armies of the empire were either hopelessly encircled at 2 . A t Sedan, o n Septembe r 2, 1 8 7 0 , the French army was defeated and captured together with the emperor. He was
detained at Wilhelmshii he, castle n e a r Kassel.
a Prussian
622
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
l\1etz or held captive in Germany. In this emergency the people allowed the Paris deputies to the former legislative body to consti tute themselves into a "Government of National Defence . " This was the more readily conceded, since, for the purposes of defence, all Parisians capable of bearing arms had enrolled in the National Guard and were· armed, so that now the workers constituted a great majority. But very soon the antagonism between the almost com pletely bourgeois government and the armed proletariat broke into open conflict. On October 3 1 , workers' battalions stormed the town hall and captured part of the membership of the government. Treachery, the government's direct breach of its undertakings, and the intervention of some petty-bourgeois battalions set them free again, and in order not to occasion the outbreak of civil war inside a city besieged by a foreign military power, the former government was left in office. At last, on January 28, 1 8 7 1 , starved Paris capitulated. But with honours unprecedented in the history of war. The forts were surren dered, the city wall stripped of guns, the weapons of the regiments of the line and of the Mobile Guard were handed over, and they themselves considered prisoners of war. But the National Guard kept its weapons and guns, and only entered into an armistice with the victors. And these did not dare enter Paris in triumph . They only dared to occupy a tiny corner of Paris, which, into the bargain, consisted partly of public parks, and even this they only occupied for a few days ! And during this time they, who had maintained their encirclement of Paris for 1 3 1 days, were themselves encircled by the armed workers of Paris, who kept a sharp watch that no "Prussian" should overstep the narrow bounds of the corner ceded to the foreign conqueror. Such was the respect which the Paris workers inspired in the army before which all the armies of the empire had laid down their arms; and the Prussian Junkers, who had come to take revenge at the home of the revolution, were compelled to stand by respectfully, and salute precisely this armed revolution ! During the war the Paris workers had confined themselves to demanding the vigorous prosecution of the fight. But now, when peace had come after the capitulation of Paris, now Thiers, the new supreme head of the government, was compelled to realise that the rule of the propertied classes-big landowners and capitalists-was in constant danger so long as the workers of Paris had arms in their hands. His first action was an attempt to disarm them. On March 1 8, he sent troops of the line with orders to rob the National Guard of the artillery belonging to it, which had been constructed during the siege of Paris and had been paid for by public subscription . The attemot failed: Paris mobilised as one man for resistance. and war
The Civil War in France
623
between Paris and the French Government sitting at Versailles was declared_. On March 26 the Paris Commune was elected and on March 28 it was proclaimed . The Central Committee of the National Guard, which up to then had carried on the government, handed in its resignation to the Commune after it had first decreed the abolition of the scandalous Paris "Morality Police." On March 3 0 the Commune abolished conscription and the standing army, and declared the sole armed force to be the National Guard, in which all citizens capable of bearing arms were to be enrolled . I t remitted all payments o f rent f o r dwelling houses from October 1 870 until April, the amounts already paid to be booked as future rent payments, and stopped all sales of articles pledged in the municipal loan office. On the same day the foreigners elected to the Commune were confirmed in office, because "the flag of the Com mune is the flag of the World Republic ." On April 1 it was decided that the highest salary to be received by any employee of the Com mune, and therefore also by its members themselves, was not to exceed 6,000 francs ( 4, 800 marks ) . On the following day the Com mune decreed the separation of the church from the state, and the abolition of all state payments for religious purposes as well as the transformation of all church property into national property; as a result of which, on April 8, the exclusion from the schools of all religious symbols, pictures, dogmas, prayers-in a word, "of all that belongs to the sphere of the individual's conscience"-was ordered and gradually put into effect. On the 5 th, in reply to the shooting, day after day, of captured Commune fighters by the Versailles troops, a decree was issued for the imprisonment of hostages, but it was never carried into execution . On the 6th, the guillotine was brought out by the 1 3 7th battalion of the National Guard, and publicly burnt, amid great popular rejoicing. On the 1 2th, the Commune decided that the Victory Column on the Place Ven dome, which had been cast from captured guns by Napoleon after the war of 1 809, should be demolished as a symbol of chauvinism and incitement to national hatred. This was carried out on May 1 6. On April 1 6 it ordered a statistical tabulation of factories which had ' been closed down by the manufacturers, and the working out of plans for the operation of these factories by the workers formerly employed in them, who were to be organised in co-operative socie ties, and also plans for the organisation of these co-operatives in one great union. On the 2 0th it abolished night work for bakers, and also the employment offices, which since the Second Empire had been mn as a monopoly by creatures appointed by the police-la bour exploiters of the first rank; these offices were transferred to the mayoralties of the twenty arrondissements of Paris. On April 30 it ordered the closing of the pawnshops, on the ground that they were
624
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
a private exploitation of the workers, and were in contradiction with the right of the workers to their instruments of labour and to credit. On May 5 it ordered the razing of the Chapel of Atonement, which had been built in expiation of the execution of Louis XVI. Thus from March 1 8 onwards the class character of the Paris movement, which had previously been pushed into the background by the fight against the foreign invaders, emerged sharply and clearly . As almost only workers, or recognised representatives of th e workers, sat in the C ommune, its decisions bore a decidedly prole tarian character. Either these decisions decreed reforms which the republican bourgeoisie had failed to pass solely out of cowardice, but which proveded a necessary basis for the free activity of the working class-such as the realisation of the principle that in rela tion to the state, religion is a purely private matter-or the Com mune promulgated decrees which were in the direct interest of the working class and in part cut deeply into the old order of society. In a beleaguered city, however, it was possible to make at most a start in the realisation o f all this . And from the beginning of May onwards all their energies were taken up by the fight against the armies assembled by the Versailles government in ever-growing numbers. On April 7 the Versailles troops had captured the Seine crossing at Neuilly, on the western front of Paris; on the other hand, in an attack on the southern front on the 1 1 th they were repulsed with heavy losses by General Eudes . Paris was continually bombarded and, moreover, by the very people who had stigmatised as a sacri l ege the bombardment of the same city by the Prussians. These same people now begged the Prussian government for the hasty return of the French soldiers taken prisoner at Sedan and Metz, in order that they might recapture Paris for them . From the beginning of May the gradual arrival of these troops gave the Versailles forces a d ecided superiority. This already became evident when, on April 2. 3 , Thiers broke off the negotiations for the exchange, proposed by the Commune, of the Archbishop of Paris and a whole number of other priests held as hostages in Paris, for only one man, Blanqui, who had twice been elected to the Commune but was a prisoner in Clairvaux. And even more from the changed language of Thiers; pre viously procrastinating and equivocal, he now suddenly became inso' lent, threatening, brutal. The Versailles forces took the redoubt oJ Moulin Saquet on the southern front, on May 3; on the 9th , Fort Issy, which had been completely reduced to ruins by gunfire; on the 1 4th, Fort Vanves. On the western front they advanced gradually, capturing the numerous villages and buildiI\gs which extended up to the city wall, until they reached the main defences; on the 2. 1 st, thanks to treachery and the carelessness of the National Guards sta-
The Civil War in France
625
tioned there, they succeeded in forcing their way into the city. The Prussians, who held the northern and eastern forts, allowed the Ver sailles troops to advance across the land north of the city, which was forbidden ground to them under the armistice, and thus to march forward, attacking on a wide front, which the Parisians naturally thought covered by the armistice, and therefore held only weakly. As a result of this, only a weak resistance was p ut up in the western half of Paris, in the luxury city proper; it grew stronger and more tenacious the nearer the incoming troops approached the eastern half, the working-class city proper. It was only after eight days' fight ing that the last defenders of the Commune succumbed on the heights of Belleville and Menilmontant; and then the massacre of defenceless men, women and children, which had been raging all through the week on an increasing scale, reached its zenith. The breechloaders could no longer kill fast enough; the vanquished were shot down in hundreds by mitrailleuse3 fire . The "Wall of the Federals" at the Pere Lachaise cemetery, where the final mass murder was consummated, is still standing today, a mute but elo quent testimony to the frenzy of which the ruling class is capable as soon as the working class dares to stand up for its rights . Then, when the slaughter of them all proved to b e impossible, came the mass arrests, the shooting of victims arbitrarily selected from the prisoners' ranks, and the removal of the rest to great camps where they awaited trial by courts-martiaL The Pruss ian troops surround ing the northeastern half of Paris had orders not to allow any fugi tives to pass; but the officers often shut their eyes when the soldiers paid more obedience to the dictates of humanity than to those of the Supreme Command; particular honour is due to the Saxon army corps, which behaved very humanely and let through many who were obviously fighters for the Commune. If today, after twenty years, we look back at the activity and h is torical significance of the Paris Commune of 1 87 1 , we shall find it necessary to make a few additions to the account given in The Civil War in France. The members of the Commune were divided into a majority, the Blanquists, who had also been predominant in the Central Commit tee of the National Guard; and a minority, members of the I nter national \Vorking Men's Association, chiefly consisting of .a dherents of the Proudhon school of socialism. The great majority of the Blanquists were at that time Socialists only by revolutionary, prole tarian instinct; only a few had attained greater clarity on principles, through Vaillant, who was familiar with German scientific social3. Mitrailleuse : Mach ine-gun. Wall 0/ t h e Fede,als : N o w usually called the
Wall
of
the Com munards.
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ism. It is therefore comprehensible that in the economic sphere much was left undone which, according to our view today, the Commune ought to have done. The hardest thing to understand is certainly the holy awe with which they remained standing respect fully outside the gates of the B ank of France. This was also a seri ous political mistake. The bank in the h ands of the Commune this would have been worth more than ten thousand hostages . It would have meant the p ressure of the whole of the French bourgeoi sie on the Versailles government in favour of peace with the Com mune. But what is still more wonderful is the correctness of much that nevertheless was done by the Commune, composed as it was of Blanquists and Proudhonists . Naturally, the Proudhonists were chiefly responsible for the economic decrees of the Commune, both f or their praiseworthy and their unpraiseworthy aspects; as the Blanquists were for its political commissions and omissions. And in both cases the irony of history willed-as is usual when doctrinaires come to the helm-that both did th e opposite of what the doc trines of their school prescribed. Proudhon, the Socialist of the small peasant and mastercrafts man, regarded association with positive hatred. He said of it that there was more ba d than good in it; that it was by nature sterile, even harmful, because it was a fetter on the freedom of the worker; that it was a pure dogma, unproductive and burdensome, in conflict as much with the freedom of the worker as with economy of labour; that its disadvantages multiplied more swiftly than its advantages; that, as compared with it, competition, division of labour and pri � vate property were economic forces . Only in the exceptional cases -as Proudhon called them-of large-scale industry and large estab lishments, such as railways, was the association of workers in place. ( See General Idea of the Revolution, Vd sl<etch. ) By 1 8 7 1 , large-scale industry had already so much ceased to be an exceptional case even in Paris, the centre of artistic handicrafts, that by far the most important decree of the Commune instituted an organisation of large-scale industry and even of manufacture which was not only to be based on the association of the workers in each factory, but also to combine all these associations in one great union; in short, an organisation which, as Marx quite rightly says in The Civil War, must necessarily have led in the end to commu nism, that is to say, the direct opposite of the Proudhon doctrine. And, therefore, the Commune was the grave of the Proudhon school of socialism. Today this school has vanished from French working-class circles; here, among the P ossibilists no less than among the "Marxists," Marx's theory now rules unchallenged. Only among the "radical" bourgeoisie are there still Proudhonists. The Blanquists fared no better. Brought up in the school of con-
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spiracy, an d held together by the strict discipline which went with it, they started out from the viewpoint that a relatively small number of resolute, well-organised men would be able, at a given favourable moment, not only to seize the helm of state, but also by a display of great, ruthless energy, to maintain power until they suc ceeded in sweeping the mass of the people into the revolution and ranging them round the small band of leaders. This involved, above all, the strictest, dictatorial centralisation of all power in the hands of the new revolutionary government. And what did the Commune, with its majority of these same B lanquists, actually do? In all its proclamations to the French in the p rovinces, it appealed to them to form a free federation of all French Communes with Paris, a national organisation which for the first time was really to be cre ated by the nation itself. It was precisely the oppressing p ower of the former centralised government, army, political police, bureauc racy, which Napoleon had created in 1 798 and which since then had been taken over by every new government as a welcome instIll ment and used against its opponents-it was precisely this power which was to fall everywhere, just as it had already fallen in Paris . From the very outset the Commune was compelled to recognise that the working class, once come to power, could not go on manag ing with the old state machine; that in order not to lose again its only just conquered supremacy, this working class must, on the one hand, do away with all the old repressive machinery previously used against it itself, and, on the other, safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without exception, subject to recall at any moment. What had been the characteristic attribute of the former state? Society had created its own organs to look after its common interests, originally through simple division of labour. But these organs, at whose head \v as the state power, had in the course of time, in pursuance of their own special interests, transformed themselves from the servants of society into the mas ters of society. This can be seen, for example, not only in the hered itary monarchy, but equally so in the democratic republic. Nowhere do "politicians" form a more separate and powerful sec tion of the nation than precisely in North America. "There, each of the two major parties which alternately succeed each other in power is itself in turn controlled by people who make a business· of poli tics, who speculate on seats in the legislative assemblies of the Union as well as of the separate states, or who make a living by carrying on agitation for their party and on its victory are rewarded with positions. It is well known how the Americans have been trying for thirty years to shake off this yoke, which has become intolerable, and h ow i n spite of it all they continue to sink ever deeper in this swamp of corruption. It is precisely in America that
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Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
we see bes t how there takes place this process of the state power making itself independent in relation to society, whose mere instru ment i t was originally intended to be . Here there exists no dynasty; no nobility, no standing army, beyond the few men keeping watch on the Indians, no bureaucracy with permanent posts or the right to pensions. And nevertheless we find here two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt means and for the most corrupt ends-and the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians, who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate and plunder it. Against this transformation of the state and the organs of the state from servants of society into masters of society-an inevitable trans formation in all previous states-the Commune made use of two infallible means . In the first place, it filled all posts-adminis trative, judicial and educational-by election on the basis of univer sal suffrage of all concerned, subject to the right of recall at any time by the same electors. And, in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers . The highest salary paid by the Commune to anyone was 6,000 francs. In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and career ism was set up, even apart from the binding mandates to delegates to representative bodies which were added besides. This shattering [Sprengung] of the former state power and its replacement by a new and truly democratic one is described in detail in the third section of The Civil WaT. B ut it was necessary to dwell briefly here once more on some of its features, because in Ger many particularly the superstitious belief in the state has been car ried over from philosophy into the general consciousness of the bourgeoisie and even of many workers. According to the philosophi cal conception, the state is the "realisation of the idea," or the Kingdom of God on earth, translated into philosophical terms, the sphere in which eternal truth and justice is or should be realised . And from this follows a superstitious reverence for the state and everything connected with it, which takes root the more readily since people are accustomed from childhood to imagine that the affairs and interests common to the whole of society coul d not be looked after otherwise than as they have been looked after in the past, that is, through the state and its lucratively positioned officials. And people think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step for ward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary mon archy and swear by the democratic republic . In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in
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the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the vic torious proletariat, just like the C ommune, cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much as possible until such time as a gen eration reared in new, free social conditions is able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap heap. Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words : Dictatorship of the Prole tariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Friedrich Engels London, on the twentieth anniversary of the Paris Commune, March 1 8, 1 89 1 *
*
*
III O n the dawn o f the 1 8th o f March, Paris arose t o the thunder burst of "Vive la C ommune ! " \Vhat is the Commune, that sphinx so tantalising to the bourgeois mind? "The proletarians of Paris, " said the Central Committee in its manifesto of the 1 8th l\farch, "amidst the failures and treasons of the ruling classes, have understood that the hour has struck for them to save the situation by taking into their own hands the direc tion of public affairs . . . . They have understood that it is their impe rious duty and their absolute right to render themselves masters of their own destinies, by seizing upon the governmental power." But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes. The centralised State power, with its ubiquitous organs of stand ing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature-organs wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of labour,-originates from the days of absolute monarchy, serving nas cent middle-class society as a mighty weapon in its struggles against feudalism. Still, its development remained clogged by all manner of mediaeval rubbish, seignorial rights, local privileges, municipal and guild monopolies and provincial constitutions . The gigantic broom of the French Revolution of the eighteenth century swept away all these relics of bygone times, thus clearing simultaneously the s ocial soil of its last hindrances to the superstructure of the modern State
630
Society and Politics i n the Nineteenth Century
edifice raised under the First Empire, itself the offspring of the coa lition wars of old semi-feudal Europe against modern France. D uring the subseq uent regimes the Government, placed under par liamentary control-that is, under the direct control of the proper tied classes-became not only a hotbed of huge national debts and crushing taxes; with its irresistible allurements of place, pelf, and patronage, it became not only the bone of contention between the rival factions and adventurers of the ruling classes; but its political character changed simultaneously with the economic changes of society. At the same pace at which the progress of modern indus try developed, widened, intensified the cla·ss antagonism between capital and labour, the State power assumed more and more the character of the national power of capital over labour, of a public force organised for social enslavement, of an engine of class despotism. After every revolution marking a progressive phase in the class struggle, the purely repressive character of the State power stands out in bolder and bolder relief. The Revolution of 1 8 3 0, resulting in the transfer of Government from the landlords to the capitalists, transferr.ed it from the more remote to the more direct antagonists of the working men. The bourgeois Republicans, who, in the name of the Revolution of February, took the State power, used it for the J une massacres, in order to convince the working class that "social" republic meant the Republic ensuring their social subjection, and in order to convince the royalist bulk of the bour geois and landlord class that they might safely leave the cares and emoluments of Government to the bourgeois "Republi c ans." How ever, after their one heroic exploit of June, the bourgeois Republi cans had, from the front, to fall back to the rear of the "Party of Order"-a combination formed by all the rival fractions and fac tions of the appropriating class in their now openly declared antago ' nism to the produci ng classes. The proper form of their joint-stock Government was the Parliamentary Republic, with Louis Bonapart e for its President. Theirs was a regime of avowed class terrorism and deliberate insult toward the "vile multitude. " If the Parliamentary Republic, as M. Thiers said, "divided them ( the different fractions of the ruling class ) least," it opened an abyss between that class and the whole body of society outside their spare ranks. The restraints by which their own divisions had under former regimes still checked the State power, were removed by their union; and in view of the threatening upheaval o f the proletariat, they now used that State power mercilessly and ostentatiously as the national war engine of capital against la b our. In their uninterrupted crusade against the producing masses they were, however, bound not only to invest the executive with continually incr-eased powers of repression,
The Civil War in France
63 1
but a t the same time to divest their own parliamentary stronghold -the National Assembly-one by one, of all its own means of de fence against the Executive. The Executive, in the person of Louis B onaparte, turned them out. The natural offspring of the "Party-of Order" Republic was the Second Empire. The empire, with the coup d'etat for its certificate of birth, uni \iersal suffrage for its sanction, and the sword for its sceptre, pro fessed to rest upon the peasantry, the large mass of producers not directly involved in the struggle of capital and labour. I t professed to save the working class by breaking down Parliamentarism, and, with it, the undisguised subserviency of Government to the proper tied classes . It professed to save the propertied classes by upholding their economic supremacy over the working class; and, finally, it professed to unite all classes by reviving for all the chimera of national glory. In reality, it was the only form of government possi ble at a time when the bourgeoisie had already lost, and the work ing class had not yet acquired, th e faculty of ruling the nation. It was acclaimed throughout the world as the saviour of society. Under its sway, bourgeois society, freed from political cares, attained a development unexpected even by itself. I ts industry and commerce expanded to colossal dimensions; financial swindling celebrated cos mopolitan orgies; the misery of the masses was set off by a shame less display of gorgeous, meretricious and debased luxury. The State power, apparently soaring high above society, was at the same time itself the greatest scandal of that society and the very hotbed of all its corruptions . Its own rottenness, and the rottenness of the society it had saved, were laid bare by the bayonet of Prussia, herself eagerly bent upon transferring the supreme seat of that regime from Paris to Berlin . Imperialism is, a t the same time, the most prosti tute and the ultimate form of the State power which nascent mid dle-class society h a d commenced to elaborate as a means of its own emancipation from feudalism, and which full-grown bourgeois society had finally transformed into a means for the enslavement of la bour by capital . The direct antithesis to the empire was the Commune. The cry of "social republic, " with which the revolution of February was ush ered in by the Paris proletariat, did but express a vague aspiration after a Republic that was not only to supersede the monarchical form of class-rule, but class-rule itself . The Commune was the posi tive form of that Republic. Paris, the central seat of the old governmental power, and, at the same time, the social stronghold of the French working class, had risen in arms against the attempt of Thiers, and the Rurals to re store and perpetuate that old governmental power bequeathed to
632
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
them by the empire. Paris could resist only because, in consequence of the siege, it had got rid of the army, and replaced it by a National Guard, the bulk of which consisted of working men , This fact was now to be transformed into an institution. The first decree of the Commune, therefore, was the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people. The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards o f the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were nat urally working men, or acknowledged representatives oJ the working clas s . The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time. I nstead of continu ing to be the agent of the Central Government, the police was at once stripped o f its political attributes, and turned into the respon sible and at all times revocable agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the Administration. From the mem bers of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workmen's wages. The vested interests and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of State disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves . Public functions ceased to be the private property of the tools of the Central Government. Not only municipal administration, but the whole initiative hitherto exercised by the State was laid into the hands of the Commune . Having once got rid of the standing army and the police, the physical force elements of the old Government, the Commun e was anxious to break the spiritual force of repression, the "parson power," by the disestablishment and disendowment of all churches as proprietary bodies. The priests were sent back to the recesses of private life, there to feed upon the a lms of the faithful in imitation of their predecessors, the Apostles. The wh ole o f the educational institutions were opened to the people gratuitously, and a t the same time cleared of all interference of Church and State. Thus, not only was education made accessible to all, but science itself fr. e ed from the fetters which class prejudice and governmental force had imposed upon it. The j udicial functionaries were to be divested of that sham inde pendence which had but served to mask their abject subserviency to all succeeding governments to which, in turn, they had taken, and broken, the oaths of allegiance. Like the rest of public servants, magistrates and judges were to be elective, responsible, and revoca ble. The Paris Commune was, of course, to serve as a model to all the great industrial centres of France. The communal regime once established in Paris and the secondary centres, the old centralised
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Government would i n the provinces, too, have t o give way t o the self-government of the producers. In a rough sketch of national organisation which the Commune had no time to develop, it states clearly that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet, 'and that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an extremely short term of service . The rural communes of every district were to administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send depu tie s to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif ( formal instruc tions ) of his constituents . The few but important functions which still would remain for a central government were not to be sup pressed, as has been intentionally mis-stated, but were to be dis charged by Communal, and therefore strictly responsible agents. The unity of the nation was not to be broken, but, on the contrary, to be organised by the Communal Constitution and to become a reality by the destruction of the State power which claimed to be the embodiment of that unity inde p endent of, and superior to, the nation itself, from which it was but a parasitic excrescence. Wh il e t h e merely repressive organs o f the o l d governmental power were t o be amputated, its legitimate functions were t o b e wrested from a n authority usurping pre-eminence over society itself, and restored t o the responsible agents of society. I nstead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the peopl e in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in th e Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for the workmen and managers in his business. And it is we11 known that companies, like individuals, in matters of real business generally know how to put the right man in the right place, and, if they for once make a mistake, to redress it promptly. On the other hand, nothing could be more foreign to the spirit o f the Commune that to supersede universal suffrage by hier archic investiture. It is genera11y the fate of completely new historical creations to be mistaken for the counterpart of older and even defunct forms of social life, to which they may bear a certain likeness. Thus, this new Commune, which breaks the modern State power, has been mis taken for a reproduction of the mediaeval Communes, which first preceded, and afterwards became the substratum of, that very State power. The Communal Constitution has been mistaken for an attempt to break up into a federation of sma11 States, as dreamt of by Montesquieu and the Girondins, that unity of great nations which, if originally brought about by political force, has now
63 4
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
become a powerful coefficient of socia l production . The antagonism of the Commune against the State power has been mistaken for an · exaggerated form of the ancient struggle against over-centralisation . Peculiar historical circumstances may have prevented the classical development, as in France, of the bourgeois form of government, and may have allowed, as in England, to complete the great central State organs by corrupt vestries, j obbing councillors, an d ferocious poor-law guardians in the towns, and virtually hereditary magis t rates in the counties. The Communal Constitution would have restored to the social body all the forces hitherto absorbed by the State parasite feeding upon, and clogging the free movement of, society. By this one act it would have initiated the regeneration of France. The provincial French middle class saw in the Commune an attempt to restore the sway their order had held over the country under Louis Philippe, and which, under Louis Napoleon, was sup planted by the pretended rule of th e country over the towns. In reality, the Communal Constitution brought the rural producers under the intellectual lead of the central towns of their districts, and these secured to them, in the working men, the natural trustees of their interests. The very existence of the Commune involved, as a matter of course, local municipal liberty, but no longer as a check upon the, now superseded, State power. It could only enter into the head of a Bismarck, who, when not engaged on his intrigues of blood and iron, always likes to resume his old trade, so befitting his mental calibre, of contributor to Kladderadatsch ( the Berlin Punch ) it could only enter into such a head, to ascribe to the Paris Commune aspirations after that caricature of the old French munic ipal organisation of 1 79 1 , the Prussian municipal constitution which degrades the town governments to mere secondary wheels in the police-machinery of the Prussian State. The Commune made that .catchword of bourgeois revolutions, cheap government, a real. ity, by destroying the two greatest sources of expenditure-the standing army and State functionarism. I ts very existence presup posed the non-existence of monarchy, which, in Europe at least, is the normal incumbrance and indispensable cloak of class-rule. It supplied the Republic with the basis of really democratic institu tions. But neither cheap Government nor the "true Republic" was its. ultimate aim; they were its mere concomitants . The multiplicity of interpretations to which the Commune has been subjected, and the multiplicity of interests which construed it in their favour, show that it was a thoroughly expansive political form, while all previous forms of government had been emphatically repressive. Its true secret was this. It was essentially a working-class government, the produce of the struggle of the producing against ,
The Civil War in France
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t h e appropriating class, the political form at l a s t discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of labour. Except on this last condition, the Communal Constitution would have been an impossibility and a delusion. The political rule of the producer cannot coexist with the perpetuation of his social slavery. The Commune was therefore to serve as a lever for uprooting the economical foundations upon which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of class-rule. With labour emancipated, every man becomes a working man, and productive labour ceases to be a class attribute. It is a strange fact. In spite of all the tall talk and all the immense literature, for the last sixty years, about Emancipation of Labour, no sooner do the working men anywhere take the subject into their own hands with a will, than uprises at once all the apolo getic phraseology of the mouthpieces of present society with its two poles of Capital and v.Tages Slavery ( the landlord now is but the sleeping partner of the capitalist ) , as if capitalist society was still in its purest state of virgin innocence, with its antagonisms still unde veloped, with its delusions still unexploded, with its prostitute reali ties not yet laid bare. The Commune, they exclaim, intends to abol ish property, the basis of all civilisation! Yes, gentlemen, the Com mune intended to abolish that class-property which makes the la bour of the many the wealth of the few. It aimed at the expropria tion of the expropriators . It wanted to make individual property a truth by transforming the means of production, land and capital, now chiefly the means of enslaving and exploiting labour, into mere instruments of free and associated labour.-But this is Communism, " impossible" Communism! Vihy, those members of t he ruling classes who are intelligent enough to perceive the impossibility of continuing the present system-and they are many-have become the obtrusive and full-mouthed apostles of co-operative production . If co-operative production is not to remain a sham and a snare; if it is to supersede the Capitalist system; if united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon a common plan, thus tak ing it under their own control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of Capital: ist production-what else, gentlemen, would it be but Commu nism, "possible" Communism? The working class did not expect miracles from the Commune. They have no ready-made utopias to introduce par dee ret du peuple. They know that in order to work out their own emancipa tion, and along with it that higher form to which present society is irresistibly tending by its own economical agencies, they will have to pass through long struggles, t h rough a series of historic processes,
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Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
transforming circumstances and men. They h ave no ideals to realise, but to set free the elements of the new society with which ol d col lapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant. In the full consciousness of their historic mission, and with the heroic resolve to act up to it, the working class can afford to smile a t the coarse invective of the gentlemen'S gentlemen with the pen and inkhorn , and at the didac tic patronage of well-wishing bourgeois-doctrinaires, pouring forth their ignorant platitudes and sectarian crotchets in the oracular tone of scientific infallibility. When the Paris Commune took the management of the revolu tion in its own hands; when plain working men for the first time dared to infringe upon the Governmental privilege of their "natural superiors," and, under circumstances of unexampled difficulty, per formed their work modestly, conscientiously, and efficiently, performed it at salaries the h ighest of which barely amounted to one-fifth of what, according to high scientific authority,4 is the min imum required for a secretary to a certain metropolitan school board,-the old world writhed in convulsions of rage at the sight of the Red Flag, the symbol of the Republic of Labour, floating over the Hotel de Ville. And yet,. this was the first revolution in which the working class was openly acknowledged as the only class capable of social initia tive, even by the great bulk of the Paris middle cl ass-shopkeepers, tradesmen, merchants-the wealthy capitalists alone excepted. The Commune had saved them by a sagacious settlement of that ever-re curring cause of dispute among the middle classes themselves-the debtor and creditor accounts.5 The same portion of the middle class, after they had assisted in putting down the working men's insurrection of June, 1 848, had been at once unceremoniously sacri ficed to their creditors by the then Constituent Assembly. But this was not their only motive for now rallying round the working class . They felt that there was but one alterna tive-the Commune, or the E mpire-under whatever name it might reappear. The Empire had ruined them economically by the havoc i t made o f public wealth, by the wholesale financial swindling it fostered, by the props it lent to the artificially accelerated centralisation of capital, and the con comitant expropriation of their own ranks . It h ad suppressed them politically, it had shocked them morally by its orgies, it had insulted their Voltairianism by handing over the education of their children to the fTeTeS IgnoTantins, i t had revolted their national feeling as Frenchmen by precipitating them headlong into a war which l eft 4'. Professor H u x l ey. [Engels, German edition of 1 8 7 1 ] s. O n April 1 8 , the C o m m u n e promul-
gated a decree postponing payments on debt obligations f o r three years.
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only one equivalent for the ruins it made-the disappearance of the Empire. In fact, after the exodus from Paris of the high Bonapartist and capitalist boheme, the true mid Ie-class ·Party of Order came out in the shape of the "Union Republicaine," enrolling themselves under the colours of the Commune and defending it against the wilful misconstruction of Thiers . Whether th e gratitude of this great body of the middle class will stand the present severe trial, time must show. The Commune was perfectly right in telling the peasants that " its victory was their only hope." Of all the lies hatched at Ver sailles and re-echoed by the glorious European penny-a-liner, one of the most tremendous was that the Rurals represented the French peasantry. Think only of the love of the French peasant for the men to whom, after 1 8 1 5, he had to pay the milliard of indemnity. In the eyes of the French peasant, the very existence of a great landed proprietor is in itself an encroachment on his conquests of 1 7 89. The bourgeois, in 1 848, had burdened his plot of land with the additional tax of forty-five cents in the franc; but then he did so in the name of the revolution; while now he had fomented a civil war against the revolution, to shift on . to the peasant's shoulders the chief load of the five milliards of indemnity to be paid to the Prussian. The Commune, on the other hand, in one of its first pro clamations, declared that the true originators of the war would be made to pay its cost. The Commune would have delivered the peas ant of the blood tax,-would h ave given him a cheap government, -transformed his present blood-suckers, the notary, advocate, exec utor, and other judicial vampires, into salaried communal agents, elected by, and responsible to, himself. It would have freed him of the tyranny of the garde champetre, the gendarme, and the prefect; would have put enlightenment by the schoolmaster in the place of stultification by the priest. And the French peasant is, above all,
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The French peasant had elected Louis Bonaparte president of the Republic; but the Party of Order created the E mpire . What the French peasant really wants he commenced to show in 1 849 and 1 8 5 0, by opposing his maire to the Government's prefect, his schoolmaster to the Government's priest, and himself to the Gov ernment's gendarme. All the laws made by the Party of Order in January and February, 1 8 50" were avowed measures of repression against the peasant. The peasant was a B onapartist, because the great Revolution, with all its benefits to him, was, in his eyes, per sonified in Napoleon . This delusion, rapidly breaking down under the Second Empire (and in its very nature hostile to the Rurals ) , this prejudice of the past, how could it have withstood the appeal of the Commune to the living interests and urgent wants of the peasantry? The Rurals-this was, in fact, their chief apprehension-knew that three month s' free communication of Communal Paris with ' the provinces would bring about a general rising of the peasants, and hence their anxiety to establish a police blockade around Paris, so as to stop the spread of the rinderpest. If the Commune was thus the trqe representative of all the healthy elements of French' society, and therefore the truly national Government, i t was, a t the same time, as a working men's Govern ment, as the bold champion of the emancipation of labour, emphat ically international, Within sight of the Prussian army, that had annexed to Germany two French provinces, the Commune annexed to France the working people all over the world. The Second Empire had been the jubilee of cosmopolitan black legism, the rakes of all countries rushing in at its call for a share in its orgies and in the plunder of the French people. Even at this moment the right hand of Thiers is Ganesco, the foul \Vallachian, and his left hand is Markovsky, the Russian spy, The Commune admitted all foreigners to the honour of dying for an immortal cause. Between the foreign war lost by their treason, and the ci\'il war fomented by their conspiracy with the foreign invader, the bourgeoisie had found the time to display their patriotism by organ ising police-hunts upon the Germans in France . The Commune made a German working man its Minister of Labour. Thiers, the bourgeoisie, the Second Empire, had continually deluded Poland by loud professions of sympathy, while in reality betraying her to, and doing the dirty work of, Russia. The Commune honoured the heroic sons of Poland by placing them at the head of the defenders of Paris. And, to broadly mark the new era of history it was con scious of initia ting, under the eyes of the conquering Prussians, on the one side, and of the Bonapartist army, led by Bonapartist gener-
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als, on the other, the Commune pulled down that colossal symbol of martial glory, the Vendome colum n . The great social measure of the Commune was its own working existence . Its special measures could but betoken the tendency of a government of the people by the people. Such were the abolition of the nightwork of journeymen bakers; the prohibition, under penalty, of the employers' practice to reduce wages by levying upon their work-people fines under manifold pretexts,-a process in which the employer combines in his own person the parts of legislator, judge, and executor, and filches the money to boot . Another measure of this class was the surrender, to associations of workmen, under reserve of compensation, of all closed workshops and factories, no matter whether the respective capitalists had absconded or preferred to strike work. The financial measures of the Commune, remarkable for their sagacity and moderation, could only be such as were compatible with the state of a beseiged town . Considering the colossal robberies committed upon the city of Paris by the great financial companies and contractors, under the protection of Haussmann,6 the Com mune would have had an incomparably better title to confiscate their prop erty than Louis Napoleon had against the Orleans family. The Hohenzollern and the English oligarchs, who both have derived a good deal of their estates from Church plunder, were, of course, greatly shocked at the Commune clearing but 8,000 f. out of secularisation . While the Versailles Government, as soon as it had recovered some spirit and strength, used the most violent means against the Commune; while it put down the free expression of opinion all over France, even to the forbidding of meetings of delegates from the large towns;' while it subjected Versailles and the rest of France to an espionage far surpassing that of the Second Empire; while it burned by its gendarme inquisitors all papers printed at Paris, and sifted all correspondence from and to Paris; while in the Na t ional Assembly the most timid attempts to put in a word for Paris were howled down in a �nanner unknown even to the Chambre introu'va ble of 1 8 1 6; with the savage warfare of Versailles outside, and its attempts at corruption and conspiracy inside Paris-would the Commune not have shamefully betrayed its trust by affecting to keep up all the decencies and appearances of liberalism as in a time of profound peace? Had the Government of the Commune been 6 . During the Second E m p i r e , B aron
Haussmann was Prefect of the Depart ment o f the Seine, that i s , o f the City of Paris. H e i ntroduced a number of
changes i n t h e layout o f the city for the purpose o f facilitating the crushing o f workers' insurrections. [V. I. Lenin,
1 905 Russian translation]
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akin to that of 1\1 Thiers, there would have been no more occasion to suppress Party-of-Order papers at Paris than t here was to suppress Communal papers a t Versail les. It was irritating indeed to the Rurals that at the very sa me time they declared the return to the church to be the onl y means of sal vation for France, the infidel Commune unearthed the peculiar mysteries o f the Picpus nunnery, and of the Church o f Saint Laur ent. It was a satire upon M. Thiers that, while he showered grand crosses upon the B onapartist generals in acknowledgement of their mastery i n losing battles, signing capitu lations, and t u rning ciga rettes at 'Vilhelmsh ohe, the Com m u n e d ismissed and arrested its generals whenever they were suspected o f neglecting their duties . The explusion from, a n d arrest by, the Comm u n e o f o n e o f its mem bers who had sl ipped in under a false name, a n d had und er gone at Lyons six days' i mprisonment for simple bankruptcy, was it not a deliberate insult hurled a t the forger, Jules Favre, then stil l t h e foreign minister of France, still selling France to Bismarck, and still dictating his orders to that paragon Government o f Belgium? B ut indeed the Commune did not pretend to infallibi lity, the invar iable attribute of all governments of the old stam p . It published its doings and sayings, i t initiated the public i n to a l l i ts shortcomings . In every revol ution there in trude, at the side of its true agents, m e n of a different stamp; some of them survivors of a n d devotees to past revolutions, without insight into the presen t movement, but preserving popular influ ence by their known honesty a n d courage, or by the sheer force o f tradition; others mere bawlers, who, by dint of repeating year after year the same set of stereotyped declama tions against the Government o f the day, have sneaked into the reputa tion of revolutionists o f the first water. After the 1 8 th of March, some such men did a lso turn up, and in some cases contrived to play pre-eminent parts . As far as their power went, they hampered the rea l action of the working class, exactly as men o f that sort have hampered the full development o f every previous revolution . They are a n unavoidable evil : with time they are shaken off; b u t tim e was not al lowed to the Commune . 'Vonderful, indeed, was the change the Commune h a d wrought i n Paris! No IOI).ger any trace of the meretricious Paris of the Second Empire. No longer was Paris the rendezvous of British land l ords, I rish a bsentees, American ex-slaveholders and shoddy men, Russian ex-serf-owners, and Wallachian boyard s . No m ore corpses a t the m o r g u e , n o nocturnal burglaries, scarcely any robberies; i n fact, for the first time since the d a ys of February, 1 84 8 , the streets of Paris were safe, and that without a n y p o l ice o f a n y kind . "'Ve," said a member o f the Commune, "hear no longer of assassina tion,
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theft and personal assault; it seems indeed a s i f the police had dragged along with it to Versailles all its Conservative friends." The cocottes had refound the scent o f their protectors-the absconding men of family, religion, and, above all, of property. In their stead, the real women of Paris showed again at the surface-heroic, noble, and devoted, like the women of antiquity. Working, thinking, fight ing, bleeding Paris-almost forgetful, in its incubation of a new society, of the cannibals at its gates-radiant in the enthusiasm of its historic intiative! Opposed to this new world at Paris, behold the old world a t Ver sailles-that assembly of the ghouls of all defunct regimes, Legiti m ists and Orleanists, eager to feed upon the carcass of the nation, -with a tail of antediluvian Republicans, sanctioning, by their presence in the Asssembly, the slaveholders' rebellion, relying for the maintenance of their Parliamentary Republic upon the vanity of the senile mountebank at its head, and caricaturing 1789 by hold ing their ghastl y meetings in the Teu de Paume.7 There it was, this Assembly, the representative of everything dead in France, propped up to the semblance of life by nothing but the swords of the gener als of Louis Bonaparte. Paris all truth, Versailles all l ie; and that lie vented through the mouth of Thiers. Thiers tells a deputation of the mayors of the Seine-et-Oise, "You may rely upon my word, which I have never broken ! " He tells the Assembly itself that "it was the most freely elected and most Liberal Assembly France ever possessed"; he tells his motley soldiery that it was "the admiration of the world, and the finest army France ever possessed"; he tells the provinces that the bombard ment of Paris by him was a myth : " I f some cannonshots have been fired, it is not the deed of the army of Versailles, but of some insur gents trying to make believe that they are fighting, while they dare not show their faces ." He again tells the provinces that "the artil lery of Versailles does not bombard Paris, but only cannonades it." H e tells the Archbishop of Paris that the pretended executions and reprisals ( ! ) attributed to the Versailles troops were all moonshine. He tells Paris that he was only anxious "to free it from the hideous tyrants who oppress it," and that, in fact, the Paris of the Com mune was "but a handful of criminals ." The Paris o f M . Thiers was n o t the re�l Paris of the "vile multi tude," but a phantom Paris, the Paris o f the francs-jileurs,8 the Paris of the Boulevards, male and female-the rich, the capitalist, the gilded, the idle Paris, now thronging with its lackeys, its black7. The tennis court where the National Assembly o f 1 7 8 9 adopted its famous decisions. [Engels, German edition oj
1871]
8. Absconders.
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S ociety and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
legs, its literary boheme, and its cocottes at Versailles, Saint-Denis, Rueil, and Saint-Germain; considering the civil war but an agree able diversion, eyeing the battle going on H1rough telescopes, count ing the rounds of cannon, and swearing by their own honour and that of their prostitutes, that the performance was far better got up than it used to be a t the Porte St. l\hrtin . The men who fell were really dead; the cries of the wounded were cries in good earnest; and, besides, the whole thing was so intensely historical. This is the Paris of M. Thiers, as the emigration of Coblenz was the France of M. de Calonne.
IV The first attempt of the slaveholders' conspiracy to put down Paris by getting the Prussians to occupy it, was frustrated by Bis marck's refusal. The second attempt, that of the 1 8th of March, ended in the rout of the army and the flight to Versailles of the Government, which ordered the whole administration to break up and follow in its track. By the semblance of peace-negotiations with Paris, Th iers found the time to prepare for war against it. But where to find an army? The remnants of the line regiments were weak in number and unsafe in character. His urgent appeal to the provinces to s uccour Versailles, by their National Guards and volun teers, met with a flat refusal. Brittany alone furnished a handful of Chouans fighting under a white flag, every one of them wearing o n h i s breast the heart o f Jesus in white cloth, and shouting V ive le R o i l " ( Long live the King! ) Thiers was, therefore, compelled to collect, in hot haste, a motley crew , composed of sailors, marines, Pontifical Zouaves, Valentin's gendarmes, and Pietri's sergents-de ville and mouchards. This army, however, would have been ridicu lously ineffective without the instalments of imperalist war-prison ers, which Bismarck granted in numbers just sufficient to keep the civil war a-going, and keep the Versailles Government in abject dependence on Prussia. During the war itself, the Versailles police had to look after the Versailles army, while the gendarmes had to drag it on by exposiI)g themselves at all posts of danger. The forts which fell were not taken, but bough t . The heroism of the Feder als convinced Thiers that the resistance of Paris was not to be broken by his own strategic genius and the bayonets at his disposal. Meanwhile, his relations with the provinces became more and more difficult. Not one single address of approval came in to glad den Thiers and his Rural s . Quite the contrary. Deputations and a ddresses deman:ding, in a tone anything but respectful, conciliation with Paris on the basis of the unequivocal recognition of the "
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Republic, the acknowledgement of the Communal liberties, and the dissolution of the National Assembly, whose mandate was extinct; poured in from all sides, and in such numbers that Dufaure, Thiers' Minister of Justice, in his circular of April 23 to the public prosecu tors, commanded them to treat "the cry of conciliation" as a crime! In regard, however, of the hopeless prospect held out by his cam paign, Thiers resolved to shift his tactics by ordering, all over the country, municipal elections to take place on the 30th of April, on the basis of the new municipal law dictated by himself to the National Assembly. \Vhat with the intrigues of his prefects, what with police intimidation, he felt quite sanguine of imparting, by the verdict of the provinces, to the National Assembly that moral power it had never possessed, and of getting at last from the prov inces the physical force required for the conquest of Paris. His banditti-warfare against Paris , exalted in his own bulletins, and the attempts of his ministers at the establishment, througho�t France, of a reign of terror, Thiers was from the beginning anxious · to accompany with a little by-play of conciliation, which had to serve more than one purpose. It was to dupe the provinces, to invei gle the middle-class element in Paris, and, above all, to afford the professed Republicans in the National Assembly the opportunity of hiding their treason against Paris behind their faith in Thiers . On the 2 1st of March, when still without an army, he had declared to the Assembly : "Come what may, I will not send an army to Paris." On the 27th March he rose again : " I have found t h e Republic an accomplished fact, and I am firmly resolved to maintain it." In reality, h e put down the revolution at Lyons and Marseilles 9 in the name of the Republic, while the roars of his Rurals drowned the very mention of its name at Versailles. After this exploit, he ton�d down the " accomplished fact" into an hypothetical fact. The Orle ans princes, whom he had cautiously warned off Bordeaux, were now, in flagrant breach of the law, permitted to intrigue at Dreux. The concessions held out by Thiers in his interminable interviews with the delegates from Paris and the provinces, although con� ' stantly varied in tone and colour, according to time and circum� stances, did in fact never come to more than the prospective restric tion of revenge to the "handful of criminals implicated in the murder of Lecomte and Clement Thomas," on the well-understood premise that Paris and France were unreservedly to accept M . Thiers himself as the best of possible Republics, as he, in 1 83 0; had done with Louis Philippe. Even these concessions he not only took 9. A few days after March 1 8 . 1 8 7 1 . revolutionary outbreaks occurred in Lyons and Marseilles aimed at the
proclamation of Communes. T h e move ment was crushed by the Thiers gov ernment.
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Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
care to render doubtful by the official comments put upon them in the Assembly through his Ministers. He had his Dufaure to act. Dufaure, this old Orleanist lawyer, p.ad always been the justiciary of the state of siege, as now in 1 87 1 , under Thiers, so in 1 83 9 under Louis Philippe, and in 1 849 under Louis Bonaparte's presidency . While out of office he made a fortune by pleading for the Paris cap italists, an d made political capital by pleading against the laws he had himself originated . He now hurried through the National Assembly not only a set of repressive laws which were, after the fall of Paris, to extirpate the last remnants of Republican liberty in France; he foreshadowed the fate of Paris by abridging the, for him, too slow procedure of courts-martial, and by a new-fangled, Dra conic code of deportation. The Revolution of 1 848, abolishing the penalty of death for political crimes, has replaced it by deportation. Louis Bonaparte did not dare, at least not in theory, to re-establish the regime of the guillotine. The Rural Assembly, not yet bold enough even to hint that the Parisians were not rebels, but assas sins, had therefore to confine its prospective vengeance against Paris to D ufaure's new code of deportation. Under all these circum stances Thiers himself could not have gone on with his comedy of conciliation, had it not, as he intended it to do, drawn forth shrieks of rage from the Rurals, whose ruminating mind did neither under stand the play, nor its necessities of hypocrisy, tergiversation, and procrastina tion. In sight of the impending municipal elections of the 3 0th April, Thiers enacted one of his great conciliation scenes on the 27th April. Amidst a flood of sentimental rhetoric, he exclaimed from the tribune of the Assembly : "There exists no conspiracy against the Republic but that of Paris, which compels us to shed French blood. I repeat it again and again . Let those impious arms fall from the hands which hold them, and chastisement will be arrested at once by an act of peace excluding only the small number 0-£ criminal s." To the violent interruption of the Rurals he replied : " Gentlemen, tell me, I implore you, am I wrong? Do you really regret that I could have stated the truth that the criminals are only a handful? Is it not fortunate in the midst of our misfortunes that those who have been capable to shed the blood of Clement Thomas and Gen eral Lecomte are but rare exceptions?" France, however, turned a deaf ear to what Thiers flattered him self to be a parliamentary siren's song. Out of 700,000 municipal councillors returned by the 3 5 ,000 communes still left to France, the united Legitimists, Orleanists and Bonapartists did not carry 8,000. The supplementary elections which followed were still more decidedly hostile. Thus, instead of getting from the provinces the badly�needed physical force, the National Assembly lost even its last
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claim to moral force, that of being the expression of the universal suffrage of the country. To complete the discomfiture, the newly chosen municipal councils of all the cities of France openly threat ened the usurping Assembly at Versailles with a counter Assembly at Bordeaux. Then the long-expected moment of decisive action had at last come for B ismarck . H e peremptorily summoned Thiers to send to Frankfort plenipotentiaries for the definitive settlement of peace. In humble obedience to the call of his master, Thiers hastened to depatch his trusty Jules Favre, backed by Pouyer-Quertier. Pouyer Quertier, an "eminent" Rouen cotton-spinner, a fervent and even servile partisan of the Second Empire, had never found any fault witb it save its commercial treaty with England, prejudicial to h i s own shop-interest. Hardly installed at Bordeaux as Thiers' Minister o f Finance, he denounced that "unholy" treaty, hinted at its near abrogation, and had even the effrontery to try, although in vain ( h aving counted without Bismarck ) , the immediate enforcement of the old protective duties against Alsace, where, he said, no previous international treaties stood in the way. This man, who considered counter-revolution as a means to put down wages at Rouen, and the surrender of French provinces as a means to bring up the price of his wares in France, was he not the one predestined to be picked out by Thiers as the helpmate of Jules Favre in his last and crown ing treason? On the arrival at Frankfort of this exquisite pair of plenipoten tiaries, bully Bismarck at once met them with the imperious alterna tive : Either the restoration of the Empire, or the unconditional acceptance of my own peace terms! These terms included a shorten ing of the intervals in which the war indemnity was to be paid and the continued occupation of the Paris forts by Prussian troops until Bismarck should feel satisfied with the state of things in France; Prussia thus being recognised as the supreme arbiter in internal French politics ! In return for this h e offered to let loose, for the extermination of Paris, the captive Bonapartist army, and to lend them the direct assistance of Emperor \Villiam's troops. · He pledged his good faith by making payment of the first instalment of the indemnity dependent on the "pacification" of Paris. Such a bait was, of course, eagerly swallowed by Thiers and his plenipoten tiaries . They signed the treaty of peace on the 1 0th of May, and had it endorsed by the Versailles Assembly on the 1 8th . In the interval between the conclusion of peace and the arrival of the Bonapartist prisoners, Thiers felt the more bound to resume his comedy of conciliation, as h is Republican tools stood in sore need of a pretext for blinking their eyes a t the preparations for the carnage of Paris . As late as. the 8th of May he replied to a deputa-
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Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
tion of middle-class conciliators : "Whenever the insurgents will make up their minds 'for capitulation, the gates of Paris shall be flung wide open during a week for all except the murderers of Gen erals Clement Thomas and Lecomte. " A few days afterwards, when violently interpellated on these promises by the Rurals, he refused to enter into any explanations; not, however, without giving them this significant hint. "I tell you there are impatient men amongst you, men who are in too great a hurry. They must have another eight days; at the end of these eight days there will be no more danger, and the task will be proportion ate to their courage and to their capacities." As soon as MacMahon was able to assure him that he could shortly enter Paris, Thiers declared to the Assemblv that "he would enter Paris with the laws in his hands, and dema � d a full expiation from the wretches who had sacrificed the lives of soldiers and destroyed public monu ments. " As the moment of decision drew near he said-to the Assembly, "I shall be pitiless! "-to Paris, that it was doomed; and to his Bonapartist banditti, that they had State licence to wreak vengeance upon Paris to their hearts' content. At last, when treach ery had opened the gates of Paris to General Douay, on the 2 1 st of May, Thiers, on the nnd, revealed to the Rurals t h e " goal" of his conciliation comedy, which they had so obstinately persisted in not understanding. " I told you a few days ago that we were approaching OUT goal; today I come to tell you the goal is reached . The victory of order, justice and civilisation is at last won ! " So i t was. The civilisation and justice o f bourgeois order comes out in its lurid light whenever the slaves and drudges of that order rise against their masters. Then this civilisation and justice stand forth as undisguised savagery and lawless revenge. Each new crisis in the class struggle between the appropriator and the producer brings out this fact more glaringly. Even the atrocities of the bourgeois in J une, 1 848, vanish before the ineffable infamy of 1 87 1 . The self-sac rificing heroism with which the population of Paris-men, women and children-fought for eight days after the entrance of the Ver saillese, reflects as much the grandeur of their cause, as the infernal deeds of the soldiery reflect the innate spirit of that civilisation of which they are the mercenary vindicators. A glorious civilisation, indeed, the great problem of which is h ow to get rid of the heaps of corpses it made after the battle was over! To find a parallel for the conduct of Thiers and his blood-hounds we m ust go back to the times of Sulla and the two Triumvirates of Rome. The same wholesale slaughter in cold blood; the same disre gard, in massacre, of age and sex; the same system of torturing pris oners; the same proscriptions, but this time of a whole class; the same savage hunt after concealed leaders, lest one might escape; the
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same denunciations of political and private enemies; the same indif ference for the butchery of entire strangers to the feud. There is but this difference, that the Romans had no mitrailleuses for the des patch, in the lump, of the proscribed, and that they had not "the law in their hands, " nor on their lips the cry of "civilisation ." And after those horrors, look upon the other, still more hideous, face of that bourgeois civilisation as described by its own press ! "With stray shots," writes the Paris correspondent of a London Tory paper, "still ringing in the distance, and untended woun ded wretches dying amid the tombstones of Pere la Chaise-with 6 , 000 terror-stricken insurgents wandering in an agony of despair in the labyrinth of the catacombs, and wretches hurried through the streets to be shot down in scores by the mitrailleuse-it is revolting to see the cafes filled with the votaries of absinthe , billiards , and dominoes; female profligacy perambulating the boulevards, and the sound of revelry disturbing the night from the cabinets particuliers of fashionable restaurants ." M. Edouard Herve writes in the Journal de Paris, a Versaillist journal suppressed by the Commune : "The way in which the population of Paris ( ! ) manifested its satisfaction yesterday was rather more than frivolous, and we fear it will grow worse as time progresses. Paris has now a fete day appearance, which is sadly out of place; and, unless we are to be called the Pari siens de la decadence, this sort of thing must come to an end ." And then he quotes the passage from Tacitus : "Yet, on the morrow of that horrible struggle, even before it was completely over, Rome degraded and corrupt-began once more to wallow in the voluptu ous slough which was destroying its body and polluting its soul-al ibi proelia et vulnera; alibi balnea popinaeque ( here fights and wounds, there baths and restaurants ) ." M . Herve only forgets to say that the "population of Paris" he speaks of is but the population of the Paris of M . Thiers-the francs-fileurs returning in throngs from Versailles, Saint-Denis, Rueil and Saint-Germain-the Paris of the "Oecline." I n all its bloody triumphs over the self-sacrificing champions of a new and better society, that nefarious civilisation, based upon the enslavement of labour, drowns the moans of its victims in a hue and-cry of calumny, reverberated by a worldwide echo . The serene working men 's Paris of the Commune is suddenly changed into a pandemonium by the bloodhounds of "order. " And what does this tremendous change prove to the bourgeois mind of all countries? \\ 'h y, that the Commune has conspired against civilisati on! The Paris people die enthusiastically for the Commune in numbers un equalled in any battle known to history. vVhat does that prove? \Vhy, that the Commune was not the people's own government but the usurpation of a handful of criminals! The women of Paris joy-
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Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
fully give up their lives at the barricades and on the place of execu tion . \Vhat does this prove? \Vhy, that the demon of the Com mune has changed them into Megaeras and Hecates! The D:lodera tion of the Commune during two months of undisputed sway is equalled only by the heroism of its defence. What does that prove? \Vhy, that for months the Commune carefully hid, under a mask of moderation and humanity, the blood-thirstiness of its fiendish instincts, to be let loose in the hour of its agony! The working men's Paris, in the act of its heroic self-holocaust, involved in its flames buildings and monuments. "'hile tearing to pieces the living body of the proletariat, its rulers must no longer expect to return triumphantly into the intact architecture of their abodes. The Government of Versailles cries, "Incendiaris m ! " and whispers this cue to all its agents, down to the remotest hamlet, to hunt up its enemies everywhere as suspect of professional incendiar ism . The bourgeoisie of the whole world, which looks complacently upon the wholesale massacre after the battle, is convulsed by horror at the desecration of brick and mortar! When governments give state-licences to their navies to "kill, burn and destroy, " is that a licence for incendiarism? When the B ritish troops wantonly set fire to the Capitol at Washington and to the summer palace of the Chinese Emperor, was that incendiar ism? When the Prussians, not for military reasons, but out of the mere spite of revenge, burned down, by the help of petroleum, towns like Chateaudun and innumerable villages, was that incen diarism? When Thiers, during six weeks, bombarded Paris, under the pretext that he wanted to set fire to those houses only in which there were people, was that incendiarism?-In war, fire is an arm as legitimate as any. B uildings held by the enemy are shelled to set them on fire. If their defenders have to retire, they themselves light the flames to prevent the attack from making use of the buildings. To be burnt down has always been the inevitable fate of all build ings situated in the front of battle of all the regular armies .of the world. But in the war of the enslaved against their enslavers, the only· justifiable war in history, th is is by no means to hold good! The Commune used fire strictly as a means of defence. They used it to stop up to the Versailles troops those long, straight avenues which Haussmann had expressly opened to artillery-fire; they used it to cover their retreat, in the same way as the Versaillese, in their advance, used their shells which destroyed at least as many build ings as the fire of the Commune. It is a matter of dispute, even now, which buildings were set fire to by the defence, and which by the attack . And the defence resorted to fire only then, when the Versaillese troops had already commenced their wholesale murder ing of prisoners.-Besides, the Commune had, long before, given
The Civil \VaT in France
649
full public notice that, if driven to extremities, they would bury themselves under the ruins of Paris, and make Paris a second Moscow, as the Government of Defence, but only as a cloak for its treason, had promised to do. For this purpose Trochu had found them the petroleum . The Commune knew that its opponents cared nothing for the lives of the Paris people, but cared much for their own Paris buildings. And Thiers, on the other hand, had given them notice that he would be implacable in his vengeance. No sooner had he got his army ready on one side, and the Prussians shutting up the trap on the other, than he proclaimed : "I shall be pitiless ! The expiation will be complete, and j ustice will be stern ! " I f the acts o f the Paris working men were vandalism, i t was the van dalism of defence in despair, not the vandalism of triumph, like that which the Christians perpetrated upon the really priceless art treasures of heathen antiquity; and even that vandalism has been j ustified by the historian as an unavoidable and comparatively tri fling concomitant to the titanic struggle between a new society aris ing and an old one breaking down . It was still less the vandalism of Haussmann, razing historic Paris to make place for the Paris of the sightseer! But the execution by the Commune of the sixty-four hostages, with the Archbishop of Paris at their head ! The bourgeoisie and its a rmy in June, 1 848, re-established a custom which had long disap peared from the practice of war-the shooting of their defenceless prisoners . This brutal custom has since been more or less strictly adhered to by the suppressors of all popular commotions in Europe and India; thus proving that it constitutes a real "progress of civilisa tion! " On the other hand, the Prussians, in France, had re-estab lished the practice of taking hostages-innocent men, who, with their lives, were to answer to them for the acts of others. \Vhen Thiers, as we have seen, from the very beginning of the conflict, enforced the humane practice of shooting down the Communal prisoners, the Commune, to protect their lives, was obliged to resort to the Prussian practice of securing hostages . The lives of the hos tages had been forfeited over and over again by the continued shooting of prisoners on the part of the Versaillese. How could they be spared any longer after the carnage with which MacMahon's praetorians celebrated their entrance into Paris? Was even the last check upon the unscrupulous ferocity of bourgeois governments the taking of hostages-to be made a mere sham of? The real mur derer of Archbishop Darboy is Thiers. The Commune again and again had offered to exchange the archbishop, and ever so many priests in the bargain, against the single Blanqui, then in the hands of Thiers . Thiers obstinately refused. He knew that with Blanqui he would give to the Commune a head; while the archbishop would
650
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
serve his purpose best in the shape of a corpse . Thiers acted upon the precedent of Cavaignac. How, in J une, 1 848, did not Cavaignac and his men of order raise shouts of horror by stigmatising the insurgents as the assassins of Archbishop Affre! They knew perfectly well that the archbishop had been shot by the soldiers of order. M. Jacquemet, the archbishop's vicar-general, p resen t on the spot, had immediately afterwards handed them in his evidence to that effect . All this chorus o f calumny, which the Party o f O rder never fail, in their orgies of blood, to raise against their victims, only proves that the bourgeois of our days considers himself the legitimate suc cessor to the baron of old, who thought every weapon in his own h and fair against the plebeian, while in the hands of the plebeian a weapon of any kind constituted in itself a crime . The conspiracy of the ruling class to break down the Revolution by a civil war carried on under the patronage of the foreign invader -a conspiracy which we have traced from the very 4th of Septem ber down to the entrance of MacMahon 's praetorians through the gate of St. Cloud-culminated in the carnage of Paris. Bismarck gloats over the ruins of Paris, in which he saw perhaps the first instalment of that general destruction of great cities he had prayed for when still a simple Rural in the Prussian Chambre introuvable of 1 849 . He gloats over the cadavers o f the Paris proletariat. For him this is not only the extermination of revolution, but the extinc tion of France, now decapitated in reality, and by the French Gov ernment itself. With the shallowness · characteristic of all sl)ccessful statesmen, he sees but the surface of this tremendous h istoric even t. \Vhenever before has history exhibited the spectacle of a conqueror crowning his victory by turning into, not only the gendarme, but t h e hired bravo of the conquered Government? There existed · n o w a r between Prussia a n d the Commune o f Paris . On t h e contrary, the C ommune had accepted the p eace preliminaries, and Prussia had announced her neutrality. Prussia was, therefore, no belligerent . She acted t h e part o f a bravo, a cowardly bravo, because incurring no danger; a hired bravo, because stipulating beforehand the pay ment of her blood-money of 500 millions on the fan of Paris . And thus, at last, came out the true character of the war, ordained by Providence as a chastisement of godless and debauched France by pious and moral Germany! And this unparalled breach of the law of nations, even as understood by the old-world lawyers, instead of arousing the "civilised" Governments of E urope to declare th e felonious Prussian Government, the mere tool of the S t . Petersburg Cabinet, an outlaw amongst nations, only incites them to consider whether the few victims who escape the double cordon around Paris are not to be given up to the hangman at Versailles!
The Civil War in Franc e
651
That after the most tremendous war of modern times , the con quering and the conquered hosts should fraternise for the common massacre of the proletariat-this unparalleled event does indicate, not, as Bismarck thinks, the final repression of a new society upheaving, but the crumbling into dust of bourgeois society. The highest hero ic effort of which old society is still capable is n a tional war; and this is now proved to be a mere governmental humbug, intended to defer the struggle of classes, and to be thrown aside as soon as that class struggle bursts out into civil war. Class rule is no longer able to d isguise itself in a national uniform; the national Governments are one as against the proletariatl After Whit-Sunday, 1 87 1 , there can be neither peace nor truce possible between the working men of France and the appropriators of their produce. The iron hand of a mercenary soldiery may keep for a time both classes tied down in common oppression. But the battle must break out again and again in ever-growing dimensions, and there can be no doubt as to who will be the victor in the end, -the appropriating few, or the immense working majority. And the French working class is only the advanced guard of the modern pro letariat. While the European governments thus testify, before Paris, to the international character of class-rule, they cry down the Interna tional \Vorking Men's Association-the international counter organisation of labour against the cosmopolitan conspiracy of capital -as the head fountain of all these disasters . Thiers denounced it as the despot of labour, pretending to be its liberator. Picard ordered those abroad should be cut off; Count j aubert, Thiers' mummified accomplice of 1 8 3 5, declares i t the great problem of all civilised that all communications between the French Internationals and governments to weed it out. The Rurals roar against it, and the whole European press joins the chorus . An honourable French writer, completely foreign to our Association, sp eaks as follows :--: "The members of the Central Committee of the National Guard, as well as the greater part of the members of the Commune, are the most active, intelligent, and energetic minds of the International Working Men's Association; . . . men who are thoroughly honest, sincere, in telligent, devoted, pure, and fanatical in the good sense of the word." The police-tinged bourgeois mind naturally figures to itself the International Working Men's Association as acting in the manner of a secret conspiracy, its central body ordering, from time to time, explosions in different countries. Our Association is, in fact, nothing but the international bond between the most advanced working men in the various countries of the civilised worl d . Whenever, in whatever shape, and under whatever conditions the
652
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
class struggle obtains any consistency, it is but natural that mem bers of our Association should stand in the foreground . The soil out of which it grows i s modern society i tsel f . It cannot be stamped out by any amount of carnage. To stamp i t out, the Governments would have t o stamp out the despotism o f capital over labour-the condition of their own parasitical existen ce. Working men's Paris, with its Commune, will be for ever cele brated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. Its martyrs are enshrined in the great heart o f the working class. I ts extermina tors history has a l rea dy nai led to that eternal pil lory from which all the prayers of their priests will not avail to redeem the m .
On Im perialism in India KARL MARX
Marx's way of analyzing the problems of an Asian society under European imperial rule is reflected in these two articles which h e wrote in English for The New York Daily Tribune and which were printed in its issues of
J une
2.5 and August 8, 1 8 5 3 . Of special interest in the analysis is the conception he entertained of Oriental despotism a s an antique form o f class society with a ruling bureaucracy based on large-scale irrigation works. We may note, too, his assumption that it was the fate of non-Western societies like that of India to go the way of bourgeois development as seen i n modern Europe.
The British Rule in India London, Friday, June
10,
1 853
Hindostan i s a n Italy o f Asiatic dimensions, the Himalayas for the Alps, the Plains of Bengal for the Plains of Lombardy, the Deccan for the Appenines, and the Isle of Ceylon for the Island of Sicily. The same rich variety in the products of the soil, and the same dismemberment in the political configuration. Just as Italy has, from time to time, been compressed by the conqueror's sword into different national masses, so do we find Hindostan, when not under the pressure of the Mohammedan, or the Mogul, or the Briton, dis� solved into as many independent and conflicting States as it num bered towns, or even villages . Yet, in a social point of view, Hindo stan is not the Italy, but the Ireland of the East. And this strange combination o f Italy and of Ireland, of a world of voluptuousness and of a world of woes, is anticipated in the ancient traditions of the religion of Hindostan . That religion is at once a religion of sen sualist exuberance, and a religion of self-torturing asceticism; a reli gion of the Lingam and of the Juggernaut; the religion of the Monk, and of the Bayadere. 653
654
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
I share not the opinion of those who believe in a golden age of Hindostan, without recurring, however, like Sir Charles Wood, for the confirmation of my view, to the authority of Khuli-Kha n . But take, for example, the times of Aurung-Zebe; or the epoch, when the Mogul appeared in the North, and the Portuguese in the South; or the age of l\10hammedan invasion, and of the Heptarchy l in Southern India; or, if you will, go still more back to antiquity, take the mythological chronology of the Brahmin himself, who places the commencement of Indian misery in an epoch even more remote than the Christian creation of the worl d . There cannot, however, remain a n y doubt but tha t t h e misery inflicted by the British on Hindostan is of an essentially different and infinitely more intensive kind than all Hindostan had to suffer before. I do not allude to European despotism, planted upon Asia tic despotism, by the British East I ndia Company,2 forming a more monstrous combination than any of the divine monsters star tling us in the temple of Salsette.3 This is no distinctive feature of British colonial rule, but only an imitation of the Dutch, and so much so that in order to characterise the working of the British East India Company, it is sufficient to literally repeat what Sir Stamford Raffles, the English Governor of J ava, said o f the old Dutch East India Company: "The Dutch Company, actuated solely by the spirit of gain, and viewing their subjects with less regard or consideration than a West India planter formerly viewed a gang upon h is estate, because the latter had paid the purchase money of human property, which the other had not, employed all the existing machinery of despotism to squeeze from the people their utmost mite of contribution, the last dregs of their labour, and thus aggravated the evils of a capricious and semi-barbarous Government, by working it with all the prac tised ingenuity of politicians, and all the monopolising selfishness of traders." All the civil wars, invasions, revolutions, conquests, famines, strangely complex, rapid and destructive a s the successive action in Hindostan may appear, did not go deeper than its surface. England has broken down the entire framework of Indian society, with out 1 . T h e conventional designation i n Eng lish history of the seven Saxon King doms (sixth to eighth century) . Marx by ana logy uses this term here to de note the feudal dismemberment of the Deccan before its conquest by the Moslems. 2. The British East India Company was organised i n 1 6 00 for the purpose o f carrying o n a monopoly trade with India. Under cover of the Company's
"trading" operations the English cap italists conquered the country and gov erned i t for decades. During the In dian uprisi n g o f 18 5 7- 1859 the Com pany was dissolved a n d the British Government began to rule India directly. . 3. A cave temple situated on the island o f that name near the c ity of Bombay. I t contains a h uge number of stone car vin gs.
On Imperialism in India
655
any symptoms of reconstitution yet appearing. This loss of his old world, with no gain of a new one, imparts a particular kind of mel ancholy to the present misery of the Hindoo, and separates Hindo stan, ruled by B ritain, from all its ancient traditions, and from the whole o f its past history . There have been i n Asia, generally, from immemorial times, but three departments of Government : that of Finance, or the plunder o f the interior; that of \Var, or the plunder of the exterior; and, finally, the department of Public \V OIks . Climate and territorial conditions, especially the vast tracts of desert, extending from the Sahara, through Arabia, Persia, India and Tartary, to the most ele vated Asiatic highlands, constituted artificial irrigation by canals and waterworks the basis of Oriental agriculture. As in Egypt and India, inundations are used for fertilising the soil of Mesopotamia, Persia, etc .; advantage is taken of a high level for feeding irrigative canals. This prime necessity of an economical and common use of water, \\' hich, in the Occident, drove private enterprise to voluntary association, as in Flanders and Italy, necessitated, in the Orient where civilisation was too low and the territorial extent too vast to call into life voluntary association, the interference of the centralis ing power of wernment. Hence an economical function devolved upon all AsiatIc Governments the function of providing public works . This artificial fertilisation of the soil , dependent .on a Central Government, and immediately decaying with the neglect of irriga tion and drainage, explains the otherwise strange fact that we now find whole territories barren and desert that were once brilliantly cultivated, as Palmyra, Petra, the ruins in Yemen, and large prov inces of Egypt, Persia and Hindostan; it also explains how a single war of devastation has been able to depopulate a country for centu ries, and to strip it of all its civilisation . Now, the British in East India accepted from their predecessors the department of finance and of war, but they have neglected entirely that of public works. Henc e the deterioration of an agricul ture which is not capable of being conducted on the British princi ple of free competition, of laissez-faire and laissez-aller. But in Asiatic empires we are quite accustomed to see agriculture deterio rating under one government and reviving again under some other government . There the harvests correspond to good or bad govern ment, as they change in Europe with good or bad seasons . Thus the oppression and neglect of agriculture, bad as it is, could not be looked upon as the final blow dealt to Indian society by the British intruder, h ad it not been attended by a circumstance of quite differ ent importance, a novelty in the annals of the whole Asiatic world. However changing the political aspect of India's past must appear,
656
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
its social condition h as remained unaltered since its remotest antiq uity, until the first decennium of the 1 9 th century. The h and-loom and the spinning-wheel, producing their regular myriads of spinners and weavers, were the pivots of the structur e of that society. From immemorial times, Europe received the admirable textures of Indian labour, sending in return for them her precious metals, and
furnishing thereby his material to the goldsmith, that indispensable member of Indian society, whose love of finery is so great that even the lowest cl ass, those wh o go about nearly naked, have commonly a pair of golden ear-rings and a gold ornament of some kind hung
round their necks. Rings on the fingers and toes h ave also been common . \Vomen as well as children frequently wore massive brace
lets and anklets of gold or silver, and statuettes of divinities in gol d
a n d silver were met with i n t h e households. I t w a s t h e British
intruder who broke up the Indian hand -loom and destroyed the spinning wheel. England began with driving the Indian cottons from the European market; it then introduced twist into Hindostan
and in th e end inundated the very mother country of cotton with
cottons . From 1 8 1 8 to 1 83 6 the export of twist from Great Britain to India rose in the proportion of 1 to 5 , 200 . In 1 8 2 4 the export of
British musl ins to India hardly amounted to 1 , 000,000 yards whi le
in 1 8 3 7 i t surpassed 64,000,000 yards . But at the same time the population of Dacca decreased from 1 5 0, 000 inhabitants to 20,000. This decline of Indian towns celebrated for their fabrics was by no means th e wors t consequence . British steam and science uprooted, over the whole surface of Hi ndostan, the union between agricul tural and manufacturing industry. These two c ircumstances-the H indoo, on the one h and, leaving, like all Oriental peoples, to the central government the care of the
great public works, th e prime condition of his agriculture and com merce, dispersed, on the oth er hand over the surface of the country, and agglomerated in small centres by the domestic union of agricul tural and manufacturing pursuits-these two circumstances h a d brought about, since t h e remotest times, a social system of particu
lar features-the so-called village system, which gave to each o f these small unions their independent organisation a n d distinct life. The peculiar character of this system may be judged from the fol
lowing description, contained in an old official report of th e British House of Commons on Indian affairs :
"A
village, geographically considered, is a tract of country com
prising some hundred or thousand acres of arable and waste lands;
politically viewed it resembles a corporation or township . Its proper establ ishment of officers \ and servants consists of the following
descriptions : the potail, or head inhabitant, who has generally the superintendence of the affairs of the village, settles the disputes of the inhabitants, attends to the police, and performs th e du�y of col-
On Imperialism in India
657
lecting the revenue within his village, a duty wh ich h i s pe r son al
influence and minute acquaintance w i t h the s i t ua t io n an d concerns
of the people render him the best q u alifi e d for t his cha rg e . The kurnum keeps th e accounts of cultiva tion, and registers everything connected with i t . The Tallier a n d tIl e totie, t he duty of the former o f which consists in gaining information of
c r i me s
and offences, and
in escorting and p rotecting persons t r a v el li ng from one village to
another; the province of the latter a p pearing to be more immedi
ately confined to the vi lla ge , c o n s i sting, among oth er duties, in
gu a rdi ng the cro p s and assisting in measuring th em. The boundary man, who preserves the limits of the vil l a ge , or gives evidence
respe c t ing them in cases of dispute. The Superintendent oJ Tanks and Watercourses distributes th e water for the purposes o f agricul ture. The B rahmin, who pe r fo r m s the vill age wor sh ip . The school m a s te r, who is s een teaching the children in a vi lla ge to read and
write in the sand . The calendar-Brahmin , or astrologer, et c . These
officers and servants generally constitute th e establishment of a vil
lage; but in some parts of the coun try it is of less extent; some of t he
duties and functions above described being un ite d in the same person; in others it exceeds the above-named number of i n d i v idua l s . U nder this simple form of mu n i c ip al government, the inhabitants
of t h e country have lived from t ime immemorial . The boundaries o f
th e v illages have
b een
but seldom al tered; and t h o ugh the vi l l a g es
them selves h a v e been sometimes inj ured, and even desolated by war, famine or disease, th e same name, the same limits, the same
in terests, and even t he same f a m i l ies , have continued for a ge s . The
inhabitants gave themselves no trouble about the b re a k in g
up anti
d i v isio n s of kingdom s; while the v i llag e remains entire, t hey care
not t o what power it
is t ra n s f erred , or to what sovereign it devolves;
its internal economy rem ains unch anged . The potail is still the head
inhabitant, and s till acts as the p et ty judge or magistrate, and collector or tentor of the v ill ag e . "
These small stereotype forms of social o r gan ism have been to
the
greater par t dissolved, an d are d i sa ppe a rin g , not so much through the brutal interference of th e British tax-gatherer and the B ritish soldier, as to the working
of
English steam and English free trad e .
Th os e family-comm unities were based on d omest i c industry, in that
peculiar combination o f han d- w e a vi n g, h an d - sp inni n g and hand-till ing agriculture which gave them s e l f - suppo r t i n g power. English interference having p lac ed th e s pi nn er in L a n c a s h i r e and the weaver
in Bengal, or sweeping away both Hindoo spinner and weaver, dis
· solved these small s e m i - barb a r ian , semi-civilised communities, by
blowing up their economical basis, and thus p ro duced th e greatest, and, to speak the t r u t h , the o nl y
Asia.
Now, sickening a s
it
social revolution ever heard of in
m us t be to human feeling to witness those
658
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
myriads of industrious patriarcha l and i noffensive soci a l organisa tions disorganised and d issol ved into their units, thrown i n to a sea of woes , and their individual members l osing a t the same time their a ncient form of civilisation, and their hereditary means o f subsist ence, we must not forget that these idyllic vil lage com munities, inoffensive though they may appear, had a lways been the solid foun dation of Oriental despotism, that they restrained the h um an m i n d w i t h i n t h e smal lest possible compass, m a k i n g i t the unresisting tool o f superstition, enslaving it beneath traditiona l r u les, deprivin g it of all grandeur and historical energies . \Ve m u st not forget the barbar ian egotism which, concentrating on some miserable patch of land, had quietly w i tnessed the ruin of empires, the perpetration of unspeakable cruelties, the m a ssacre of the popu lation of large towns, with n o other considera tion bestowed upon them than on natural even ts, itself the helpless prey of any aggressor wh o deigned to notice it a t a l l . We must not forget that this un dign ified, stagna tory, and vegetative life, that this passive sort of existence evoked on the o t h e r part, in contradistinction, wi ld, aimless, unbounded forces of destruction and rendered murder itself a religious rite in H i ndo s ta n . We m ust not forget that these l i ttle com m u n i ties were contam inated by distinctions of caste and by sla very, that they su bjugated man to external circumstances instead of elevating man to be the sovereign of circumstances, t h a t they transform ed a self-developing social state into never changing natural destiny, and thus b rough t a bout a bruta lising worship o f na ture, exhibiting its degradation i n t h e fact that m a n , t h e sovereign o f nature, fel l down o n his knees in adoration of Hanuman, the monkey, and Sabbala, the cow.
England, it is true, in causing a socia l revolution i n H indostan, was actuated only by the vi lest interests, and was stupid in her manner o f enforcing them. But that is n o t the q uestio n . The q ues tion is, can mankind fulfi l l i ts destiny without a fundamental revo l u tion in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may h ave been
the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution .
Then, whatever bitterness the spectacle of the crumbling of an ancient world may have for our personal feel ings, we have the right, i n point of history, to exclaim with Goeth e : "SolIte diese Qual uns qualen, Da sie u nsre Lust vermehrt, Hat nicht Myriaden Seelen Timur's Heerschaft aufgezehrt?"4 4. Should this
torture then torment us Since it brings us greater pleasure? Were not through the rule of T i m u r
S o u l s d e v o u r e d w i t h o u t measure? ( Goethe, Westostlicher Diwan. A n Suleika)
On Imperialism
m
India
659
The Fu t ure Resul t s of B ri t ish Rule in India London, Friday, July 2 2 , 1 8 5 3 How came i t that English supremacy was established i n India? The paramount power of the Great Mogul was broken by the Mogul Viceroys. The power of the Viceroys was broken by th e I\lahrattas.5 The power of the Mahrattas was broken by the Afghans, and while all were struggling against all, the Briton rushed in and was enabled to subdue them all . A country not only divided between Mohammedan and Hindoo, but between tribe and tribe, between caste and caste; a society whose framework was based on a sort of equilibrium , resulting from a general repulsion and coristitutional exclusiveness between all its members. Such a country and such a society, where they not the predestined prey of conquest? If we knew nothing of the past history of Hindostan, would there not be the one great and incontestable fact, that even at this moment India is held in English thraldom by an Indian army maintained at the cost of India? India, then, could not escape the fate of being conquered, and the whole of her past history, if it be anything, is the history of the successive conqu ests she has undergone. Indian society has no historv at all, at least no known historv. What we call its historv, " is but t h e historv of the successive i � truders who founded t heir empires on th � passive basis of that unresisting ·and unchanging society. The question, therefore, is not whether the English h ad a right to conquer India, but whether we are to prefer India con quered by the Turk, by the Persian, by the Russian, to Indi;j. con quered by the B riton. England has to fulfil a double mission . in India : one destructive, the other regenerating-the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia. Arabs, Turks, Tartars, Moguls, who had successively overrun India, soon became Hindooised, the barbarian conquerors being, by an eternal law of history, conquered themselves by the superior civ ilisation of their subjeCts . The British were the first conquetors superior, and therefore, inaccessible to Hindoo civilisation. They destroyed it by breaking up the native communities, by uprooting the native industry, and by levelling all that was great and elevated in the native society. The historic pages of their rule in India report hardly anything beyond that destruction. The work of regeneration S . A group of people i n C e n t r a l India who rose against the M ohammedans and i n the beginning of the eighteenth
century formed a confederation o f feudal princedoms.
660
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
hardly transpires through a heap of ruins. Nevertheless it has begun . T h e political unity of India, more consolida ted, and extending
farther than it ever did under the Great Moguls, was the first condi tion of its regenera tion. That unity, imposed by the British sword, will now be strengthened and perpetuated by the electric telegraph. The native army, organised and trained by the B ritish drill-sergea nt, was the sine qua non of Indian self-emancipa tion, and of I n dia ceas ing to be the prey of the first foreign intruder. The free press, intro duced for the first time into Asiatic society, and managed princi
pa lly by the common offspring of Hindoo and Europeans, is a new and powerful agen t of reconstruction. The Zemindars and Ryotwar6 themselves, a bominable a s they a re, involve two distinct forms of private property in land-the great desideratum of Asiatic
society. From the Indian na tives, reluctantly and sparingly edu
ca ted a t Ca lcu tta, under English superintendence, a fresh class is
springing up, endowed with the req uirements for government a n d
imbued w i t h European science. Steam has brough t I n dia i n t o regu lar and rapid communica tion with Eu rope, h as connected its chief
ports with those of the whole south-eastern ocean, and has revindi
cated it from the isola ted position which was the prime law of its
stagnation. The day is not far distant when, by a combination of
railways and steam vessels, the distance between England a n d India,
measured by time, will be shortened to eig h t days, and when t h a t once fabu lous coun try will thus be actua l l y annexed t o t h e \\!estern wor ld.
The ruling classes of Great Britain have had, till now, but an
acciden tal, transitory and exceptional in terest in the progress of I n dia. The a ristocracy wanted to conquer it, the mon�yocracy to plunder it, and the millocracy to undersell it. B ut now the ta bles are turned. The millocracy have discovered that the transformation
of India into a reproductive country has become of vita l importance to them, and that, to that end, it is necessary, above a ll, to gift her
with means of irrigation and of in terna l communica tion . They
intend now drawing a net of railways over India. And they wil . l do it. The resu l ts must be inapprecia ble. It is notorious tnat the productive powers of In dia are para lysed
by the utter want of means for conveying a n d excha nging its various produce. Nowhere, more than in India, do we meet with socia l des titution in the mids t of natura l plenty, for want of the means of exchange. It was proved before a Committee of the British House
1. Zemindars : New big landowners who were established by the British from among former tax collectors and mer chant-usurers through the expropriation of the Indian peasantry. The zemindar system was widespread in �ortheast
India. Ryotwar: A system of renting land to peasants for an unlimited per iod of time. Introduced by the British in the South of India, it permitted them to let land to peasants on extremely onerous terms.
On Imperialism in India
661
of C ommons, which sat in 1848, that "when grain was selling from 6s. to
8s.
a quarter at Kandeish, i t was sold at 64s. to 70S. at Poonah,
where the peo ple were dying in the streets of famine, without the possibility of gaining supplies from Kandeish, because the clay-roads were impracticable." The introduction of railways may be easily made to subserve agri
cultural purposes by th e formation of tanks, where ground is required for embankmen t, and by the conveyance of water along the different lines. Thus irrigation, the
sine qua non
of farming in
the East, might be greatl y extended, and the frequently recurring local fami nes, arising from the want of water, would be averted. The general impo rtance of railways, viewed under this head, must become evident, when we remember that irrigated lands, even in the district near Cha uts, pay three times as much in taxes, afford ten or twelve times as much employment, and yield twelve or fifteen times as much profit, as the same a rea without irrigation. Railways will afford the means of diminishing the amount and the cost of the military establishments. Col. \Varren, Town Major of the Fort St. William, stated before a Select Committee of the House of Commons:
"The practicability of receiving intelligence from distant parts of
the country in as many hours as at present it requires days and even weeks, and of sending instruction s with troops and stores, in the more brief period, are considerations which cannot be too highly estimated. Troops could be kept at more distant and healthier sta tions than at present, and m u ch l oss of life from sickness would by this means be spared. S tores could not to the same extent be required at the various depots, and the loss by decay, and the destruction incidental to the climate, would also be avoided. The number of troops m ight be diminished in direct proportion to t heir effectiveness ." \Ve know that the municipal organisation and the economical basis of th e vil lage communities has been broken up, but their worst feature, the dissolution of society into stereotyped and discon nected atoms, has survived their vitality. The village isolation pro duced the absence of roads in In dia , an d the absence of roads per petuated the village isolation. On this plan a community existed with a given scale of low conveniences, almost without intercourse with other villages, without the desires and efforts indispensable to social advance. The B ritish having broken up this self-sufficient iner
tia of the villlages, railways will provide the new wan t of communi cation and intercourse. Besides, "one of the effects of the railway
system will be to bring into every village affected by it such knowl edge of the contrivances and appliances of other countries, and such means of obtaining them, as will first pu t the hereditary and stipen-
662
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
diary village artisanship of India to full proof of its capabilities, and then supply its defects." (Chapman, The Cotton and Commerce of
India. ) I know that the English millocracy intend to endow In dia with railways with the exclusive view of extracting at diminished expen ses the cotton and other raw materials for their manufactures . B u t when you have once introduced machinery into the locomotion of a country, which possesses iron and coals, you are unable to with hold it from its fabrication. You cannot maintain a net of railways over an immense country without introducing all those industrial proc
esses necessary to meet the immediate and current wants of railway
locomotion, and out of which there must grow the application of
machinery to those branches of industry not immediately connected with railways. The railway-system wiII therefore become, in In dia,
truly the forerunner of modern industry. This is the more certain as
the Hindoos are a l lowed by British authorities themselves to possess particular aptitude for accommodating t hemselves to entirely new la bour, and acquiring the requisite knowledge of machinery. Ample proof of this fact is afforded by the capacities and expertness of the native engineers i n the Calcutta mint, where they have been for years employed in working the steam machinery, by the natives attached to the several steam engines in the Hurdwar coal districts
and by other in stances . Mr. Campbel l himself, greatly influenced as h e is by the prejudices of the East In dia Company, is obliged to
avow "that the great mass of the Indian people possesses a grea t
industrial energy,
is well fitted to accumulate capital, and remarka
ble for a mathematical clearness of head, and talent for figures and exac t sciences . " "Their intellects," he says, "are excellen t . " :Modem industry, resulting from. the railway-system, w i l l dissolve the heredi tary d ivisions of labour, upon which rest the Indian castes, those decisive impediments to Indian progress and Indian power. All the English bourgeoisie may be forced to do will neither emancipate nor material l y mend the socia l condition of the mass of the people, depending not only on the development of the produc
tive powers, but on their appropriation by the people. But what
they will not fail to do is to lay down the material premises for both . Has the bourgeoisie ever done more? Has it ever affected a
progress \vithout dragging individuals and peoples through bl ood and dirt, t hrough misery and degradation?
The Indians will not reap the fruits of the new elements of
society scattered a mong them by the British bourgeoisie, till in Great Britain itself the now ruling classes shall h a ve been sup planted by the industrial proletariat, or til l the Hi ndoos themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the English yoke a l to gether: At all events, we may safely expect to see, a t a more or less remote period, the regeneration of that great and interesting coun-
On Imperialism in India
663
try, whose gentle natives are, to use the expression of Prince Solty
kov, even i n the most inferior classes,
les Italiens,"7
"plus pns et plus adroits que
whose submission even is counterbalanced by a cer
tain calm nobility, who, notwithstanding their natural languor, have
astonished the British officers by their bravery, w h ose country h as been the source of our languages, our religions, and who represent the type of the ancient German in the Jat and the type of the
ancient Greek in the Brahmin.s
I cannot part with the subject of India without some concluding remarks. The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civ
i lisation lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its home, where
it assumes respectable forms, to the colonies, where it goes naked. They are the defenders of property, but did any revolutionary party ever originate agrarian revolutions l i�e those in Bengal, i n Madras, and in Bombay? Did they not, in India, to borrow an expression of that great robber, Lord Clive himself, resort to atrocious extortion, when simple corruption could not keep pace with their rapacity? \Vhile they prated in Europe about the inviolable sanctity of the national debt, did they not confiscate in India the dividends of the
rajahs,
who had invested their private savings in the Company's
'own fun ds? \Vhile they combatted the French revolution under tIre- pretext of defending "our holy religion," did they not forbid, at the same time, Christianity to be propagated in India, and did they not, i n order to make money out o f the pilgrims streaming to the tem ples of Orissa and Bengal, take up the trade i n the murder and pros titution perpetrated in the temple of Juggernaut? These are the men of "Property, Order, Family, and Religion." The devastating effects of English industry, when contemplated with regard to India, a country as vast as Europe, and containing 150 mi llions of acres, are palpable and confounding. But we must not forget that they are only the organic results of the whole system of production as -it is now constituted. That production rests on the
supreme rule of capital. The centralisation of capital is essential to the existence of capital as an ind ependent power. The destructive
influence of that centralisation u pcin the markets of the world does but reveal, in the most gigantic dimensions, the inherent organic laws o f political economy now a t work i n every civilised town. The bourgeois period of history has to create the material basis of the new world-on the one hand the universal intercourse founded
upon the mutual dependency of m a nkind, and the means of that
intercourse; on the other han d the developme�t of the productive powers of man and the transformation of material production into a 7. Marx quotes from A. D. Soltykov's book Lettres sur l'lnde, Paris, 1848, 8. Jat: A member of an agricultural
caste in Northwest India. Brahmin: member of the highest Hindu caste.
A
664
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
scientific domination of natural agencies. Bourgeois industry and commerce create these material conditions of a new world in th e same way as geological revolutions have created the surface of the
earth . When a great social revolution shall have mastered th e re sults of the bourgeois epoch, the market of the world and the mod ern powers of production, and subjected them to the common control of the most advanced peoples, then only will huma n prog ress cease to resemble that hideous pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar b u t from the skulls of the slain.
On Social Relations In Russia FRIEDRICH ENGELS
Russian radicals in the second half 'Of the nineteenth century showed an in creasingly intense interest in Marxism, and Marx noted in a letter of 1880 that in Russia
"Capital
is more read and appreciated than anywhere else."
Until the 1890'S, however, the Russian socialist movement was largely Populist
(narodnik),
believing that in pre-bourgeois Russia there could be
an early socialist revolution based 'On peasant rather than prolet!uian masses and using the archaic village commune as the nucleus of a fl,iture Russian socialist society. Leading Russian Populists occasionally wrote to Marx and Engels, either to elicit their views on the Russian situation or to defend their own views. One of them, Pyotr Tkachov, wrote an "Open Letter" to Engels in 1874, and Engels' reply, "On Social Relations in Russia," is the fullest statement of his own and Marx's appraisal of Russian society in the late nineteenth century and the prospects for revolution there. Following the essay is a statement on the same subject from Marx's letter of March 8,
1881, to a Russian radical, Vera Zasulich.
On the subject matter proper, Mr. Tkachov tells the German
workers that a s regards Russia I possess not even a "little knowl edge," possess nothing but "ignorance"; and he feels himself, there fore, obliged to explain to them the real state of affairs, and in par ticular the reasons why just a t the present time a social revolution could be made in Russia with the greatest o f ease, much more easily than in \\'estern Europe . "We have no urban proletariat, that is undoubtedly true; but, then, we also have no bourgeoisie; . . . o u r workers will have to fight only against the
political po we r
-
the
power of capital
is with u s still
only in embryo. And you, sir, are undoubtedly aware that the fight against the former is much easier than against the latter." The revolution which modern socialism strives to achieve is, briefly, the victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, and the establishment of a new organisation o f society by the destruction of all class distinctions . This requires not only a proletariat that carries out this revolution, but also a bourgeoisie in whose hands the pro665
666
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
ductive forces of society have developed so far that they a l low of the final destruction of class distinctions. Among savages and semi savages there likewise often exist no class distinctions, and every people has passed through such a sta te. It could not occur to us to
re-establish this sta te, for the simple reason that class .distinctions
necessarily emerge out of i t as the productive forces of society develop. Only at a certain level of development of the productive forces of society, an even very high level for our modern conditions, does it become possible to raise prod uction to such an extent that the a bolition of class distinctions can be a rea l progress, can be last ing withou t bringing a bout stagnation or even decline in the mode of social production. B u t the productive forces have rea ched this
level of development only in the hands of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie, therefore, in this respect also is just as necessary a pre condition of the socia list revolution as the proletariat itsel f. Hence a man who will say that this revolution can be more easily carried out in a country, because,
although it has no proletariat, it has no bour
geoisie either, only proves that he has still to learn the AB C of . socialism.
The Russian workers-and these workers are, as Mr. Tkachov himself says, "tillers of the soil and as such not proletarians b u t owners-have, therefore, an easier t a s k because they do not have to fight aga inst the power of capital, but "only against the pol itical
power," against the Russian state. And this state "appears only a t a
distance as a power; . . . it h a s no roots in the economic life of the
people; i t does not embody the interests of any particular estate .. .. In your country the state is no ima ginary power. It stands four square on the basis of capital; it embodies in itself [!!] certain eco
nomic interests. . .. In our country the situa tion is just the reverse -the form of our society owes its existence to the sta te, to a state
hanging in the air, so to speak, one that ha s nothing in common
with the existing socia l order, and t h a t has its roots in the past, b u t not in the present."
Let us waste no time over the confused notion that the economic
interests need the sta te, which they themselves create, in order to a cquire a body, or over the bold contention that the Russian. "form of society (which, of course, m ust inc lude also the communa l prop
erty of the peasants) owes its existence to the sta te," or over the
contradiction t h a t this same state "h a s not hing in com mon" with
the existing social order which is supposed to be its very own crea tion. Let us rather examine at once this "state hanging in the air," which does not represent the interests of even a single estate. In European Russia the peasants possess 105 million dessiatins,
the nobility (as I shall here term the big landowners for .the sake of brevity) 100 mil lion dessiatins of land, of which a bout h a l f belong
On Social Relations in Russia
667
to 15,000 nobles , who consequent l y each possess on the average 3,300 dessiatins . The land of the p easants is, tli�refore, only a t ri fl e · bigger tha n t h a t o f the nobles . S o yo u s e e , t h e nobles have not the slightest in teres t in the exis tence of the Russian s ta te, which pro tects them in the possession of half the country! To continue . The peasa nts, from their half, pay 195 million rubles l a nd tax a nnually, th e nobles-13 m il l ion! Th e l a nds of the nobles are on the average t wice as fertile a s those o f th e p easants, because during the settle m e nt for the redemption of the
cOTvee
the state not only too k th e
gr eater part but also the bes t part of the land from the peasants and gav e it to the nobles, and for this worst land th e peasants h a d to pay t h e nobi lity the price of the b est . A nd the Russia n nobility h a s no interest in t h e e xistence o f the Russian state! The peasa nts -taken in th e mass-have been put by the r ed emp tion into a most m iserable and wholly unte nable posit ion. Not only has the greatest a nd best part of their land been taken from them, s o tha t i n all the fertile parts o f the country th e peasant land i s fa r too small-under Russian a gricultural cond iti ons -for them to be abl e to make a living from i t. Not onl y were they charged an exces sive price for it, a dv ;mc ed to them by the state and for which they now have to pay interest and instalmen ts on the principal to the s ta t e. No t only is almost the whole burden of the land tax thrown upon them, w h il e the nobi lity escapes almost scot-free-so that the land tax alone consumes the entire ground rent value o f the p easant l a nd a n d more, a n d all furth er p a yments which the peasant h a s to make and which we wil l s p ea k of immedia tely are d ir ect deductions from that part o f his in come which r epresents his wages . Then, i n addit ion t o t h e l a n d tax, t o t h e interest a nd amortisation pa yments on the money adva nced by the state, since the recent in troduction of local adminis tra t ion, there are the provincial a nd d istrict imposts as well. Th e most essential consequence o f this "reform" was fresh tax burd ens for the peasant. The state retained its revenues in their e nti rety, but passed on a lar ge p a rt of i ts expend i ture to the prov inces a nd d istricts, which i m posed new taxes to meet the m , and in R ussia it is the rule that the h ig h er estates are almost tax exempt a nd the peasant pa �. almost ever ything. Such a situation· is as i f specia l l y created for the usurer, and with the almost unequalled talent of the R ussians for trad ing on a lower l ev el , for ta king f ul l advantage o f favourable business s ituations and
the swind ling inseparable from this -Peter I l o n g a go said t h a t one
Russian could get the better o f t h re e Jews-th e usurer everywhere makes his appearance. \Vhen taxes are about to fall d u e, th e usu rer , the kula k-fr equently a rich peasant of the sam e village communi t y -comes a lon g and offers h i s ready cash . The peasant m u s t have t h e mone y at a l l costs and is obliged to accept t h e conditions o f the
668
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
usurer without demur. But this onl y gets him into a tighter fix, and he needs more and more ready cash. A t ha rvest time the grain dealer arrives; the need for money forces the peasant to sell
low price and often even part of this in all sorts of high-priced goods; for the truck system is also highly developed in Russia. It is quite obvious that the great corn exports of Russia
directl y on
are based
the starvation of the peasan t population. Another
met hod of exploiting the peasant is the fol lowing:
a
speculator rents
domain land from the government for a long term of years, and cul tiva tes it himself as long as it yields a good crop without man ure; then he divides it up into sma ll plots and lets out the exhausted
land at high rents to neighbouring peasants who cannot manage on
the i n come from their a l l otment. Here we have exactly the Irish
middlemen, just as a bove the English truck system. In short, there is no country in which, in spite of the pristine savagery of bourgeois society,
capitalistic
para sitism
is
so
developed,
so
covers
and
entangles the whole country, the whole mass of the population,
with its nets as in Russia. And all t hese bloodsuckers of the peas a n ts are supposed to h ave no interest in the existence of the Rus
sian state, whose laws and law courts protect their sleek and profita
ble practices!
The big bourgeoisie of Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, which has developed with un heard-of rapidity during t h e last decade, chiefly
due to the railways, and which cheerfully "went smash " along with the rest during the last swindle years, the grain, hemp, flax and tal low exporters, whose whole business is built up on the misery of the peasant, the entire Russian large-scale ind ustry, which only exists thanks to the protective tariffs gran ted it by the state-have all these important and rapidly growing elements of the population no interest in the existence of the Russian state? To say nothing of
the coun t less army of officials, which swarms over Russia and plun
ders i t and here constitu tes a rea l socia l estate. And when Mr. Tka chov assures us that the Russian state has "no roots in the economic life of the people, " that "it does not embody the in ter ests of any particul a r estate," that it "hangs in the a ir," methinks it is not t h e Russian state that hangs in the air, b u t rather Mr. Tka chov.
It is clear tha t the condition of the Russian peasa nts si nce the emancipa tion from serfdom has become intolerable and caimot be maintained much longer, and that for this reason a lone if for no other a revolution is i n the offing i n Russia. The question is only:
what can be, w h a t will be the result of this revol ution? Mr. Tka
chov says i t will be a social one. This is pure tau tology. Every real
/ /
On Social Relations in Russia
669
revolution is a social one, in that it brings a new class to power and allows it to remodel society in its own image. But he wants to say it will be a socialist one, it will introduce into Russia the form of society aimed a t by \Vest European socialism, even before we in the \Vest succeed in doing so-and that i n a condition of society in which both proletariat and bourgeoisie appear only sporadically and a t a low stage of development. And this is supposed to be possible because the Russians are, so to speak, the chosen people of social ism, and have artels and common ownership of land. The artel, which Mr. Tkachov mentions only incidentally, but which w e include here because since the t ime of Herzen i t has played a mysterious role with many Russians-the artel in Russia is a widespread form o f association, the simplest form of free co-opera tion, such as is t o be found for hunting among hunting tribes. \Vord and content are not of Slavic b u t of Tatar origin . Both are to be found among the Kirghiz, Yakuts, etc., on the one hand, and among the Lapps, Samoyeds and other Finnish peoples, on the other.! That is why the artel developed originally in the North and East, by contact with Finns and Tatars, not in the South-\Ves t . The severe climate makes necessary industrial activity o f various kinds, and so the lack of urban development and of capital is replaced, as far a s possible, by this form of co-operation. O n e of the most characteristic features of the artel, the collective responsibility of its members for one another to third parties, was based originally on blood relationship, like the mutual liability [GewereJ of the ancient Germans, the blood vengeance, etc . l\loreover; i n Russia the word artel is used for every form of n o t only collective activity but also collective institution. The artels, an elder
Bourse is also an artel. In workers'
(st�sta, starshina)
is always chosen who fulfils the
functions of treasurer, bookkeeper, etc . , and of manager as far as necessary and receives a special salary. Such artels are formed: 1.
For temporary enterprises, after the completion of which they
dissolve; 2.
For the members of one and the same trade, for instance, por
ters, etc.; 3. F o r permanent enterprises, industrial in the proper sense of the
word. They are established by a contract signed by all the members. Now if these members cannot bring together the necessary capital, as very often happens, for instance, i n the case of cheeseries and fish eries (for nets, boats, etc .), the artel falls a prey to the usurer, w h o advances t h e a m o u n t l a c k i n g a t h i g h interest, and thereafter pockets 1. On the artel. compare inter alia: Sbornik materialov ob artel"akh v Rossii [Collection of Material on Ar-
tels in Russia], St. Petersburg Part 1. [Engels]
1873,
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
670
the greater part of the income from work. Stil l more shamefully
exploited, however, are the artels which hire themselves in a body to
an employer as wage labourers . They d irect their industrial activity
themselves and thus save the capitalist the cost of supervision . The
l atter lets to the mem bers h uts to live in and advances them the
meanS of subsistence, which in turn gives rise to the most disgrace
ful truck system. Such is th e case with the lumbermen and tar dis tillers in the Archangel
gubernia, and in many trades in Siberia, etc . Polozheniye rabochevo klassa v Rossii. [The Condi tion of the Working Class in Russia], St. Petersburg 1869.) Here then the artel serves to considerably facilitate the exploitation of the
(Cf.
Flerovsky,
wage-worker by the capitalist. On the other hand, there are also artels which themselves employ wage-workers, who are
of the association.
not members
It is thus seen that the artel is a co-operative society which has arisen spontaneously and is, therefore, sti l l very undeveloped, and as
such neither exclusivelv Russian nor even Slavic. Such societies are
formed wherever the n:eed for them exists . For instance, in Switzer
land among the dairy farmers, in England among the fishermen,
where they even assume a great variety of forms. The Sil esian nav
vies (Germans, not Poles), who b u i lt so many German railways
in the forties, were organised in complete artel s . The predom
inance of this form in Russia proves, it is true, the existence in
the Russian people of a strong impulse to associate, but. is far
from proving their ability to jump, with the aid of t his impulse,
from the artel straight into the socialist order of society. For that, it is necessary above all that the artel itself shou l d be capable of devel
opment, that it shed its primitive form, in which, as we saw, it serves t he wO.rkers l e s s than it does capital, and rise
at least to the
level of the \Vest European co-operative societies. But i f we are to believe Mr. Tkachov for once (which , after all that has preceded,
IS
certainly more than risky), t h i s is by no means the case. On the
contrary, h e assures us with a pride highly indicative of his stand point: "As regards the co-operative and credit associations
German
[!]
n the � model, recently artificially transplanted to Russia, these
have met with complete indifference on the part of the majority of our workers and have been a failure almost even'where." The
modern co-operative society has at least proved t hat i t can run
large-scale industry profitably on its own account (spinning and
weaving in Lancashire) . The arte l is so far not only incapable of
doing this; it must of necessity even be destroyed by big industry if it does not develop further.
The communal property of the Russian peasants was discovered
about the year
1 845
by the Prussian Government Counci l lor Hax
thausen and trumpeted to the world as something absolutely won-
On Social Relations in Russia
671
derful, although Haxthausen could still have found survivals enough
of it in his Westphalian homeland, and, as a government official, it
was even part of his duty to know them thoroughly. It was from Haxthausen that Herzen, himself a Russian landowner, first learned
that his peasants owned the land in common, and he made use of
the fact to describ e the Russian peasants as the true vehicles of
socialism, as born Comm unists in contrast to the workers of the aging, decayed European West, who wou ld first have to go through the ordeal of acquiring socialism artificially.
From Herzen this
knowledge came to Bakunin, and from Bakunin to Mr. Tkachov. Let us hear the latter:
"Our people . .. in its great
�ajority
. .. is permeated with the
principles of common ownership, it is, if one may use the term,
instinctively, traditionally communist. The idea of collective p rop erty is so cl osely interwoven with the whole world outlook [we shall
see immediately how far the world of the Russian peasant ex
tends] of the Russian people that today, when the government
begins to understand that this idea is incompatible with the princi ples of a 'well-ordered' society, and in the name of these principles
wishes to impress the idea of individual property on the conscious
ness and life of the people, it can succeed in doing so only with the help of the bayonet and the knout. It is clear from this that our
people, despite its ignorance, is much nearer to socialism than the peoples of Western Europe, although the latter are more educated."
I n reality communal ownership of t h e land is an institution
which is to be found among all Indo-Germanic peoples on a low
level of development, from India to Ireland, and even among the
Malays, who are developing under Indian influence, for instance, in
Java . As late as 1608, in the newly conquered North of Ireland, the
legally established communal ownership of the land served the
English as a pretext for declaring the land a s ownerless and as
escheated to the Crown . In Ind i a a whole series of forms of com
munal property has been in existence down to the present time. In
Germany it was general; the communal lands still to be found h ere· and there are a relic of i t; and often still distinct traces of it, tempo rary divisions of the communal lands, etc., are also to be found,
especially in the mountains. l\-1ore exact references and details with
regard to old German communal ownership may be consulted in
the various writings of
Maurer,
which are classic on this question.
In Western Eu rope, including Poland and Little Russia, at a cer
tain stage in the social development, this communal ownership
became a fetter, a brake on agricultural production, and was more
and more eliminated. I n Great Russia (that is, Russia proper), on the other h and, it has persisted until today, thereby proving in the
first place that here agricultural production and the social condi-
672
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
tions in the countryside corresponding to it are stil1 very undevel oped, as is actual1y the case. The Russian peasant lives and has his being only in his village community; the rest of the world exists for
him only in so far as it interferes with his village community. This is so much the case that in Russia the same word,
mir,
mean s, on
the one hand, "world" and, on the other, "peasant community."
Yes mir, the whole world, means to the peasan t the meeting of the community members. Hence, when l\1r. Tkachov speaks of the of the Russian peasants, he has obviously trans lated the Russian mir incorrectly. Such a complete isolation of the individual communities from one another, which creates throughout the country similar, but the very opposite of common, interests, is
"world outlook"
the natural basis for
Oriental despotism,
and from India to Russia
t his form of society, wherever it prevailed, has always produced it,
and always found its complement in it. Not only the Russian state
in general, but even its specific form, tsarist despotism, instead of hanging in t h e air, is the necessary and logical product of Russian
social conditions with which, according to Mr. Tkachov, it has "nothing i n common"! Further development of Russia in a bour
geois direction would here also destroy communal property little by little, without any need for the Russian government to intervene with "bayonet and knout." And this al1 the more because the
communal1y owned land in Russia i s no t cultivated by the peasants
in common so t hat the product may then be divided, as is still the
case in some districts in India; on the contrary, from time to time the land is divided up among the various heads of families, and each cultivates his al10tment for himself. Consequently, great differ ences in degree of prosperity are possible among the members of the
community, and actually exis t . Almost everywhere there are a few rich peasants among them-here and t here millionaires-who play the usurer and suck the blood of the mass of the peasants. No one knows this better than Mr. Tkachov. \Vhile h e wants the German workers to believe that the "idea of collective ownership" can be
driven out of the Russian peasants, t hese instinctive, traditional Communists, only by bayonet and knout, he writes on page 15 of his Russian pamphlet: 'Among the peasants a class of usurers
(kulaks) is making its way, a class of people who buy up and rent the lands of peasants and nobles-a m uzhik aristocracy." These are the same kind of bloodsuckers as we described more fully above. \Vhat dealt the severest blow to communal ownership was again the redemption of the corvee. The greater and better part of the land was allotted to the nobility; for the peasant there remained scarcely enough, often not enough, to live o n. In addition the for ests were given to the nobles; the wood for fuel, implements and building, which the peasant formerly might fetch there for nothing,
he has now to buy. Thus t he peasant has nothing now bu t his house
673
On Social Relations in Russia and the bare land, w ithout me. a ns to c
� tivate it, and on the average
w ithout enough land to support him and his family from one har
vest to the next. Under such conditions and under the pressure of taxes and usurers, communal ownership of the land is no longer a blessing; it becomes a fetter. The peasants often run away from it,
with or without their families, t o earn their living as migratory labourers, and leave their land behind them.2 It is clear t h a t communal ownership in Russia is long past its perio d of florescence and to all appearances is moving towards its disintegration. Nevertheless, the possibil ity undeniably exists of rais ing this form of society to a higher one, if i t should last until cir cumstances are ripe for that, and if it shows itself capable of devel opment in such manner that the peasants no longer cultivate the
land separately, but collectively;3 o f raising it to this higher form witho ut it being necessary for the Russian peasants to go through the intermediate stage of bourgeois small holdings. This, however,
can only happen if, before the complete break-up o f communal ownership, a proletarian revolution is successfully carried out in
vVestern Europe, creating for the Russian peasant the preconditions requisite for such a transition, particularly the material conditions
which h e needs if only to carry through the revolution necessarily connected therewith of his whole agricultural system . It is, there
fore, sheer bounce for Mr. Tkachov to say that th e Russian peas
ants, although "owners," are "nearer to socialism" than the proper
tyless workers of "'es tern Europe. Quite the opposite. If anything
can still save Russian communal ownership and give it a chance of growing into a new, really viable form, it is a proletarian revolution in Western Europe.
Mr. Tkachov treats the political revolution just as lightly as he
does the economic one. The Russian people, he relates, "protests in cessantly" against its enslavement, now in form of "religious sects . . . refusal to pay taxes .. . robber bands (the German workers will
be glad to know that, accordingly, Schinderhannes4 is the father o f German Social-Democracy) . .. i ncendiarism .. . revolts
.
.
.
and
hence the Russian people may be termed an instinctive revolution
ist." And thus Mr. Tkachov is convinced that "it is only necess!lry to evoke an outburst in a number of places at the same time of all
the accumulated bitterness and discontent, which is always seeth2. On the position of the peasants com pare inter alia the official report of the government commission on agricultural production (1873), and further, Skal din, V zakholustye i v stolitse [I .. the Backwoods and in the Capital], St. Pe tersburg 1870; the latter publication by a liberal conservative. [Engels] 3. In Poland, particularly in the Grodno gubernia, where the nobility for the most part was ruined by the re-
bell ion of 1863, the peasants now fre quently buy or rent estates from the nobles and cultivate them unpartitioned and on their collective account. And these peasants have not had communal ownership for centuries and are n ot Great Russians, b u t Poles, Lithuanians and Byelorussians. [Engels1 4. Schinderhannes: nickname of Johann Biickler, a well-known German robber.
674
Society and Politics in the Nineteenth Century
ing in the breast of our people." Then "the union of the revolu tionary forces will come about of itself, and the fight . .. must end favourably for the p eople's cause. Practical necessity, the instinct of
self-preservation," will then achieve q ui te of itself "a firm and indis
sol uble alliance among the protesting village com m uni ties."
It is impossi ble to conceive of a revolution on easier and more
pleasant terms. One starts shooting, at three or four places simulta
neously, and the " instinctive revolutionist," "practical necessity"
and the "instinct of self-preservation" do the rest "of themselves."
B eing so d ead easy, it is simply incomprehensible why t h e revolu tion has not long ago been m ade, the peop le li berated and Russia
transformed into the model socialist country .
Actually, .it is quite a different mat ter. The Russian people, this
instinctive revolutionist, has, true enough, made numerous isolated
peasant revolts against the but
nobility and against individual officials, never against the tsar, except when a false tsar p u t himself at its
head and claimed the throne. The last great peasant rising, under Catherine
II,
was
only
possible
because
Yemelyan
Pugachov
claimed to be her husband, Peter III, who al legedly had not been murdered by his wife, b u t dethroned and clapped in prison, and
who had now escaped . The tsar is, on the contrary, the earth god of the Russian peasant:
Bog vysoko, tsar da leko
-
God is on h igh and
the tsar far away, is h i s cry in the hour of need. There is no dou bt
t hat the mass of redemption of the
the peasant population,
especial ly
since the
corvee, has been reduced to a cond ition w hich
more and more forces on it a fight also against the government and
the tsar; but Mr. Tkachov will have to try to sel l his fairy-tale of the "instinctive revolu tionist" somewhere else.
And then, even if the mass of the Russian peasants were ever so i nstinctively revolutionary, even if we imagined that revolutions
cou ld be made to order, just as one makes a piece of flowered calico
or a teakettle-even then I ask, is it permissible for one over twelve
years of age to imagine the course of a revolution in such an utterly childish manner as is the case here? And remem ber further that this
was written after the first revolution made on this Bakunin model -the Spanish one o f IB73-had so brilliantly failed. There, too, they let loose at several places simultaneously. There too i t was cal
culated that practical necessity and the instinct of self-preservation
would of themselves bring abo u t a firm and indissoluble alliance
between the protesting communities. And what happened? Every village communi ty, every town only defended itself, there was no
question of mutual assistance, and with only three thousand men
Pavia overcame one town after another in a fortnig h t and p u t an
end to the entire anarchist g lory.
w here this is descri bed in detail .)
(Cf. my Bakuninists at Work,
Russia undoubtedly is o n the eve o f a revolution. H er financi;:tl
On Social Relations in Russia
675
affairs are in extreme disorder. Taxes cannot be screwed any higher,
the interest on old state loans is paid by means of new loans, and every new loan meets with greater difficulties; money can now only be raised under the pretext of building railways! The administra
tion, as of old, corrupt from top to bottom, the officials living more from theft, bribery and extortion than on their salaries. The entire agricultural production-by far the m o st essential for Russia
completely dislocated by the redemption settlement of 1861; the big landowners without sufficient labour power, the peasants with out s ufficient land, oppressed by taxation and sucked dry by usurers, agricultural production declining from year to year. The whole held together with great difficulty and only outwardly by an Oriental des potism whose arbitrariness we in the \Vest simply cannot imagine; a despotism which not only from day to day comes into more glaring contradiction with the views of the enlightened classes and in par
ticular with those of the rapidly developing bourgeoisie of the capi tal, but whic11, in the person of its present bearer, has lost its head, one day making concessions to liberalism and the next, frigh ten ed,
cancelling them again and thus bringing itself more and more into disrepute. \Vith all that a growing recognition among the enlight ened strata of the nation concentrated in the capital that this posi tion is un tenable : that a revolution is impending, and the ill usion
that it will be possible to guide this revolution into a smooth, con stitutional channel. Here all the conditions of a revolution are com bined, of a revolution which, started by the upper classes of the capi tal, perhaps even by the government itself, must be rapidly carried further, beyond the first constitutional phase, by the peasants; of a
revolution which will be of the greatest importance for the whole of
Europe if only b ecause it will destroy at one blow the last, so far
intact, reserve of the entire European reaction. This revolution is surely approaching. Only two events could stil1 delay it; a successful
war against Turkey or Austria, for which money and firm al1iances
are necessary, or-a premature attempt at insurrection, which would drive the possessing classes back into the arms of the government.
:Marx's Reply to Vera Zasulich * * * the analysis given in
Capital
assigns no reasons for or
against the vitality of the rural community, but the special research
into this subject which I conducted, the materials for which I obtained from original sources, has convinced me that this commuc' nity is th e mainspring of Russia's social regeneration, but in order that it might function as such one would first have to eliminate the deleterious influences which assail it from every quarter and then to ensure the conditions normal for spontaneous development.
Europocentric World Revolution The proletarian socialist revolution was to be a world revolution
(a
world
market having taken shape under capitalism ) , and, as Marx said in The
Class Struggles in France, "the social revolution of the nineteenth century."
Europe's advanced capitalism made it appear the natural epicenter of world revolution. How would European revolution be affected by and affect developments elsewhere? A letter of October 8, 1858, to Engels reflected Marx's uneasiness on this score. A much later letter, from Engels to Karl Kautsky on
September
12., 1882., voiced a more sanguine view in the
suggestion that a socialist Europe and North America would lead the rest of the world to socialist revolution by force of example.
Marx to Engels *
*
*
The specific task of bourgeois society i s the e s ta b lishment
of a world marke t, a t least in outline, and of production based upon this world m a rket. As the wor ld is round, this seems to have been completed by the colonisation of C a lifornia a nd Aus t ralia and the openin g up o f China and Jap a n . The difficult que s tion for us is: on the Continen t the revolution is im m i n e n t and will immediately a s sume a socia l i s t character. Is it n o t bound to be crushed in thi� lit t le corner, con siderin g that in a far greater territory the move m e n t o f bourgeois society is still i n the ascenda n t?
Engels to Karl Kautsky * * * You a sk me what the En glish workers think about colonia l
p olicy. \Ve ll, exactly the s a m e a s th e y thi n k a b o u t pol i tics i n genera l: t h e s a m e as the bourgeois t h ink. T h e r e i s n o workers ' party here, you see, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers gaily share the feast of En gland's monopoly of the world market and the c o lonies. In my opinion the colonies proper, i .e ., the countrie s occupied by a European population-Ca nada, the Cape, Austral ia-wil l all become independent; o n the other h a n d , t h e countrie s inhabited by a native population, which a r e simply subju gated-India, Al geria, the Du tch, Portuguese ,and Spanish pos sessions-must be taken over for the tim e bein g by the proletariat and led as rapid ly a s possible towards independence. How this p roc ess will develop is difficult to say. India will perhaps, indeed very probably, make a revolu tion, and as a prole tariat in process of self676
Europocentric World Revolution
677
eman cipation ca nnot con d u ct a n y co lonial w a rs , i t would h a v e to b e a llow ed to run its cou rs e; i t would n o t p a s s off without all sorts of d estruction, of co urse, b u t that sort of thin g i s insepara ble from a ll rev olutions. The s ame might also take place elsewhere, e. g., in Algeria a n d Egypt, and would certainly be the best thi n g us.
for
\V e sha ll h a v e enough to do at home. O n ce Eu rope is reorgan
ized, and North Am erica, tha t will f urnish such colossal power and such a n exampl e tha t the semi - civilized countries will of themselves follow in their wake; economi c needs, if anything, will s ee to tha t. B u t as to w h a t s o cia l and poli ti ca l p h a s es th es e countries w ill then h ave to pass through befo re they likewise a rrive a t socialis t organiza tion , I think we tod a y can advance onl y rather idle h ypoth eses . O n e thi ng a l one i s certa i n : the v ictorious p rolet a riat ca n fo rce n o b l ess i n gs o f any kind upo n any foreign n a tion without undermining i ts own victory by so d o i n g. \Vhich of course by no means excludes d efen sive wars of v a rious kinds.
* * *
PART V
The Later . Engels: Ela bora tion and Popularization
Speech
at
the Graveside of Karl Marx FRIEDRICH ENGELS
Marx d i e d o n M a t c h 1 4, 1 8 8 3 . Three d a y s l a t e r Engels delivered this graveside speech i n English a t Highgate Cemetery, London, where Marx was buried. Engels spoke in English. The speech appeared in a German paper in German translation, and has appeared i n English only in retransla tion from the German.
On the 1 4th of March, a t a quarter to three in t h e afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when w e came back we found him i n his armchair, peacefully gone t o sleep-but for ever. An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant proletariat o f Europe and America, a n d by historical science, in the death o f this m a n . The gap that has been left by the departure o f this mighty s p i r i t w i l l soon e n o u g h m ake itself f e l t . J u s t as D a r w i n discovered t h e law o f development o f organic nature, so Marx discovered the law o f development of h um a n his tory : the simple fact, h itherto concealed by an overgrowth o f ideol ogy, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and cloth ing, before i t can pursu e politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that t herefore the production o f the immediate material means o f sub sistence and consequently the degree o f economic development attained by
given people o r during a given epoch form the founda
a
tion upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved,
and
in
the light
o f which
they
must,
therefore,
be
explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case . B ut that
is
not all . Marx also
discovered the special law o f
motion governing t h e present-day capitalist mode o f production a n d the bourgeois society that this mode o f production h a s created . T h e discovery o f surplus value suddenly threw light o n the problem, i n t r y i n g to solve which all p r e v i o u s investigations, o f b o t h bourgeois economists a n d socialist critics, h a d been groping i n the d ark. Two such discoveries would be enough for one lifetime. Happy 681
682
The Later Engels
the man to whom i t is granted to make even one such discovery . B u t in every single field w h ich Marx investigated-and he investi gated very many fiel d s , none of them superficially-in every field, even in that o f mathematics, he made indep endent discoveries . Such was the man of science. But this was not even h a l f the man . Science was for Marx a h is torically dyna.mic, revolutionary force . However great the joy with which he welcomed a n ew discov ery in some theoretical science whose p ractical application perhaps it was as yet quite impossible to envisage, he experienced q u i te another kind of joy when the discovery involved immediate revolu tionary cha nges in industry, and in historical development in gen era l . For example, he followed closely the development of the dis coveries made in the field o f electricity a n d recently th ose of Marcel D ep rez . For Marx was before all else a revol u t ionis t . His real mission in life was to contri bute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brough t i n t o being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which
he
was the fi rst to make conscious o f its own position and its
needs, conscious o f the condi t ions o f its emancipation . Fighting was his elem ent. And h e fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few coul d rival . His work on the first Rheinische
Zeitung ( 1 84 2 ) , tbe Paris Vorwiirts1 ( 1 8 44 ) , the Deutsche B riisse ler Zeitung ( 1 84 7 ) , the Neue Rheinische Zeitung ( 1 848-49 ) , the New York Tribune ( 1 8 5 2-6 1 ) , and in addition to these a host of militant pamphlets, work in organisations in Paris, Brussels and London, and finally, crowning all, the formation o f the great I n ter n ational \Vorking M e n 's Association-this was in d eed an achieve ment of which its founder might well have b een proud even if he had done nothing else . And, consequently, Marx was the best hated and m os t calumni ated m a n of his tim e . Governments, both absolutist and republi can, deported h i m from their territories. B o urgeois, whether con serva tive or ultra-democra tic, vied with one another in h eaping slan ders upon him . All this he brushed aside as th ough i t were cobweb, ignoring it, answering only when extreme necessi ty compelled him . And he died beloved, revered and mourned by mil lions of revolu tionary fellow workers-from the mines o f Siberia to California, in all parts o f Europe and America-and I make bold to say that though he may have had many opponents h e had hardly o n e per sonal enemy.
His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work!
1 . Vorwarts (Forward) : A radical n ewspaper o f the German Socialists in emigration, o n e o f whose contribu tors
was Karl M ar x . It appeared i n German at Paris i n 1 8 4 4 .
Socialism: Uto p ian and Scientific FRIEDRICH ENGELS
b�tter
Engels' polemical work Herr Eugen Diihring's Revolution in Scienc e, . known as Anti·Diihring, came out i n 1 8 7 8 . At the request o his fnend . . Paul Lafargue, Engels arranged three genera l chapters of as a
�
pa mphlet dealing with the origins of Mar ism and su
� An.tl.-DlL�rll�g
� m� nzIng
Its vlew of . UtopIan a nd . Scien ific soon appeared i n many other languages and became, l ong with historY. Originally published in French In 1 8 80, SOCIalIsm:
t
�
�
?f
the Communist Manifesto, the most influential popular pr sentabon
the
Marxist position i n · the late nineteenth century. The text gIven here IS that of the au thorized English edition of 1 8 9 2 .
I Modern social ism is, in its essenc e, the direct product of the rec ognit ion, on the one hand, of the class antag onism existi ng in the societ y o f today between propr ietors and non-p roprietors, betwe en capita list s and wage- worke rs; on the other hand, o f the anarc hy existin g in produ ction . But, in its theore tical form, mode rn social i sm origin ally appea rs ostensibly as a more logica l exten sion of the princi ples laid down by the great Frenc h philosopher s o f the eight eenth centu ry. Like every new theor y, m o d ern social ism had, at first, to connect itself with the intell ectua l stock- in-tra de ready to i t s hand, howev er d eeply its roots l a y in mater ial econo mic facts. The great men , who in Franc e prepa red m en ' s mind s for the comin g revolu tion, were them selves extrem e revol ution i st s. They recogn ised n o external autho rity of any kind whate ver. Religi on, natur al sci ence, societ y, politi cal institu tions-everyt hing was sub j ected to the most unspa ring critici sm : everyt hing must j u stify its exi stence before t h e judgem ent-seat of rea son o r give up ex istenc e. Rea son becam e the sol e mea su r e of everyt h ing. It was the time w h en, a s Hegel say s, the world stood upon i ts h ea d ; l first i n the 1 This is t h e passage on t h e French Revolutio n : "Thought, the concept of law, aU at once made itself fe� t , and against this the old scaffoldmg C!f wrong could make no stand. I n �hlS conception of law, therefore, a constltu.
683
tion has now been establ i shed and henceforth everything must be bas�d upon th is Since the sun had be � n m the firmament, and the planets cncled round him the sight � ad never bee n seen of man standmg upon h I. S ,
.
,
684
The Later Engels
sense that the h u m a n head, and the principles arrived at by its thought, claimed to be the basis of all h uman action and associa tions; but by and by, also, in the wider sense that the reality which was i n contradiction to these principles h a d , in fact, to be turned upside down. Every form o f �ociety a n d government then existing, every old traditional notion was flung into the lumber-room as irra tional; the world had hitherto allowed itself to be led solely by prejudices; everything in the past deserved only pity and c o n temp t . N o w , f o r t h e fi r s t t i m e , appeared t h e light o f day, t h e kingdom o f r e a s o n ; henceforth superstition, injustice, privilege, oppressi on , were t o be superseded b y eternal truth, eternal Right, equality based on Nature and the inalienable rights of m a n . \Ve know today that this kingdom of reason was nothing more than the idealised kingdom of the bourgeoisie; that this eternal Right found its realisation in bourgeois justice; t h a t this equality reduced itself to b o u rgeois equality before the law; that bourgeois property was proclaimed as one of the essential rights of man; and that the government o f reason, the Contrat Social o f Rousseau , came into being, and only could come into being, as a democratic bo u rgeois republic . The great thinkers o f the eighteenth century could,
no
m ore
than
their predecessors,
go beyond
the
limits
i m posed upon them by their ep och. B u t , side by side with the antagonism of the feudal nobility and the burghers, who claimed to represent a l l the rest of society, was the general antagonism of exploiters and exploited, o f rich idlers and poor workers. It was this very circumstance that made i t possi ble for the representa tives o f the bourgeoisie to put themselves for ward as representing not one special class, but the whole of suffer ing humanity. Still further. From its origin the bourgeoisie was sad dled with its antithesis : capitalists cannot exist without wage-work ers, and, in the s a m e proportion as the mediaeval burgher o f the guild developed into the modern bourgeois, the g uild jo urneyman and the day-labourer, outside the guilds, developed in to the prole tarian. And although, upon the whole, the bourgeoisie, in their struggle with the nobility, could claim to represent a t t h e same time the interests of the different working classes of that p e riod, yet in every great bourgeois movement there were independent outbursts
head-i . e . , on t h e Idea- and building reality after this i m a g e . Anaxagoras first said that the Nous, reason, rules the worl d ; b u t now, f o r the first t i m e , had m a n come to recognise t h at t h e Idea must r u l e the m e n t a l r e a l i t y . And this was a magnificent sunrise. All thinking beings have participated in celebrating this holy day. A sublime emotion swayed m e n at that time, an
enthusiasm of reason pervaded the world, as i f now had come the reconcil iation of the D iv i n e Principle with the worl d . " [ Hegel : Ph ilosophy of History, 1 8 4 0 , p . 5 3 5 .] Is i t not high time to set the anti-Socialist l a w i n action against such teachings, subversive and to the common danger, by the late Professor Hegel? [Engels]
685
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
o f that class which was the forerunner, more or less developed, of the modern proletariat. For example, at the time of the German Reformation and the Peasants' \Var, the Anabaptists and Thomas Munzer; in the great English Revolution, the Levellers; in the great French Revolution, Babeuf. There were theoretical enunciations corresponding with these rev olutionary uprisings of a class n o t yet developed; in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Utopian pictures o f ideal social conditions;2
in
the
eighteenth,
actual
communistic
theories
( MoreUy and Mably ) . The demand for equality was no longer lim i ted to political rights; it was extended also t o the social conditions of individuals. It was not simply class privileges that were to be abolished, but class distinctions themselves. A communism, ascetic, denouncing all the pleasures of life, Spartan, was the first form o f t h e n e w teaching. Then came t h e three great U topians :
Saint
Simon, to whom the middle-class movement, side by side with the proletarian, stiB had a certain significance; Fourier; and Owen, who i n the country where capitalist production was most developed, and
under the influence of the antagonisms begotten of this, worked
out his proposals for the removal of class distinction systel1]atically and in direct relation to French materialis m . O n e thing i s common to all three. N o t o n e o f them appears as a representative of the interests of that proletariat which historical development had, in the meantime, produced . Like the French phi losophers, they do not claim to emancipate a particular class to begin with, but all humanity at once. Like them, they wish to bring in the kingdom o f reason and eternal justice, but this kingdom, as they see it, is as far as heaven from earth, from that of the French philosophers. For, to our three social reformers, the bourgeois world, based upon the principles of these philosophers, is quite a s irrational and unj ust, and, therefore, finds its way to the dust-hole quite as readily as feudalism and all the earlier stages of society . If pure reason and
j ustice have not, hitherto, ruled the world, this has been the case only because m en have not rightly understood them. \V hat was wanted was the individual man of genius, who has now arisen and who understands the truth . That he has now arisen, that the truth has now been clearly understood, is not an inevitable event, follow ing of necessity in the chain of historical development, but a mere happy accident . He might just as well have been born 5 00 years ear
lier, and might then have spared humanity 500 years o f error, strife, and suffering. \Ve saw how the French philosophers of the eighteenth century, 2. Engels refers here to the works of the Utopian Socialists Thomas More
(sixteenth century) and Tommaso Campanella ( s eventeenth century ) .
686
The Later Engels
the forerunners of the Revolution, appealed to reason as the sole j udge of all that is. A rational government , rational society, were to
be founded; everything that ran counter to eternal reason was to be remorselessly done away with . We saw also tha t this eternal reason was in reality nothing but the idealised understanding of the eight eenth century citizen, just then evolving into the bourgeois . The French Revolution had realised this rational society and govern ment. But the new order of things, rational enough as compared w i th earlier conditions, turned out to be by no means absolutely rational. The state based upon reason completely collapsed. Rousseau's Con trat Social had found its realisation in the Reign o f Terror, from which the bourgeoisie, wh o had lost confidence in their own politi cal capacity, h ad taken refuge first in the corruption of the Di rec torate, and, finally, under the wing of the Napoleonic despoti sm . The promised efernal peace was turned into an endl ess war of con quest. The society based upon reason had fared no better. The antagonism between rich and poor, instead of dissolving into gen eral prosperity, had become intensified by the removal of the guild and other privileges, which had to some extent bridged i t over, and by the removal of the charitable institutions of the Church. The "freedom of property" from feudal fetters, now veritably accom plished, turned out to be, for the small capitalists and small propri etors, the freedom to sell their small property, crushed under the overmastering competition of the large capitalists and landlords, to these great lords, and thus, as far as the small capitalists and peas ant proprietors were concerned, became "freedom
from
property . "
T h e development o f i n d u s try u p o n a capitalistic basis m a d e poverty and misery of the working masses conditions of existence of society. Cash payment became more and more, in Carlyle ' s phrase, the sole nexus between man and man . The number of crimes increased from year to year. Formerly, the feudal vices had openly stalked about in broad daylight; though not eradicated, they were now at any rate thrust into the background. I n their stead, the bourgeois vices, h ith erto practised in secret, began to blossom all the more luxuriantly. Trade became to a greater and greater extent cheating. The "fra ternity" of the revolutionary motto was realised in the chicanery and rivalries of the battle of competition. Oppression by force was replaced by corruption; the sword, as the first social lever, by gol d . T h e right of t h e fi r s t n i g h t w a s transferred f r o m the feudal lords t o the bourgeois manufacturers. Prostitution increased t o an extent never heard of. Marriage itself remained, as before, the legally recognised form, the official cloak of prostitution, and, moreover, was supplemented by rich crops of adultery. I n a word, compared with the splendid promises of the phi-
687
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
losophers, the social and political institutions born of the "triumph of reason" were bitterly disappointing caricaturers. All that was wanting was the men to formulate this disappointment, and they came with the turn of the century. I n 180 2 Sai n t-Simon's Geneva letters appeared; in 1808 appeared Fourier's first work, although the
groundwork of his theory dated from 1 79 9 ; on January 1, 1 800, Robert Owen undertook the direction of New Lanark. A t this time, however, the capitalist mode of production, and
with it the antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, was still very incompletely developed . Modern industry, which had just arisen in England, was still unknown in France. But modern industry develops, o n the one hand, the conflicts which make abso lutely necessary a revolution in the mode of production, and the doing
away
with
its
capitalistic
character-conflicts
not
only
between the classes begotten of it, but also between the very pro ductive forces and the forms of exchange created by it. And, on the other hand, it develops, in these very gigantic p roductive forces, the means of ending these conflicts. If, therefore, about the year 1800,
the conflicts arising from the new social order were only just begin ning to take shape, this holds still more fully as to the means of ending the m . The "have-nothing" masses of Paris, during the Reign of Terror, were able for a moment to gain the mastery, and thus to lead the bourgeois revolution to victory in spite o f the bourgeoisie themselves . B u t, in doing so, they only proved how impossible it was for their d o m ination to last under the conditions then obtain ing. The proletariat, which then for the first time evolved itself from these "have-nothing" masses as the nucleus of a new class, as yet quite incapable of independent political action, app eared a s an oppressed, suffering order, t o whom, in its incapacity to help itself, help could, at best, be brought in from without or down from above. This historical situation also dominated the founders of socialism . T o the crude conditions of capitalistic production and the crude class conditions corresponded crude theorie s . The solution of the ' social problems, which as yet lay hidden in undeveloped economic conditions, the Utopians attempted to evolve out of the h uman . brain. Society presented nothing but wrongs; to remove these was the t ask of reason . It was necessary , then, t o discover a new and more perfect system of social order and to impose this upon society from without by propaganda, and wherever i t was possible, by the example of model experiments. These new social systems were fore doomed as Utopian; the more completely they were worked out in detail, the more they could n o t avoid drifting off . phantasies .
into
pure
These facts once established, we need not dwell a moment longer
688
The Later Engels
upon this side of the question, now wholly belonging t o the p a s t . We c a n leave it to t h e literary s m a l l fry to solemnly quibble over these phantasies, which today only make us smile, and to crow over the superiority of their own bald reasoning, a s compared with such "insan i ty . " For ourselves, we delight in the stupendously grand though ts and germs of thought that everywhere break out through their phantastic covering, and to which these Philistines are blind. Saint-Simon was a s o n of the great French Revolution, a t the outbreak o f which he was not yet thirty . The Revolution was the victory of the third estate, i.e., of the great masses of the nation, working i n production and in trade, over the privilege d idle cl asses, the nobles and the priests. B u t the victory of the third estate soon revealed itself a s exclusively the victory of a small p a r t of this " estate," a s the conquest of political power by the socially privileged section of it,
i . e., th e propertied bourgeoisie. And the bourgeoisie
had certainly developed rapidly during the Revolution, partly by speculation in the lands of the nobility and of the Church, confis cated and afterwards put up for sale, a n d partly by frauds upon the nation by means of army contracts . It was the domination of these swindlers t h a t, under the Directorate, brought France t o the verge of ruin, and thu s gave Napoleon the pretext for his
coup d'etat.
Hence , to Saint-Simon the antagonism between the third estate and the privileged classes took the form of an antagonism between "workers" and "idlers. " The idlers were n o t merely the old privi leged classes, but also all who, without taking any part in produc tion or distribution, lived on their incomes. And the workers were not only the wage-workers, but also the manufacturers, the mer chants, the bankers. That the idlers had lost the capacity for intel lectual leadership and political supremacy had been proved, and was by the Revolution finally settled. That the non-possessing classes had not this capacity seemed to Saint-Simon proved by the experi ences of the Reign of Terror. Then, who was to lead and com m and? According t o Saint-Simon, science and industry, both u ni ted by a new religious bond, destined to restore that unity of religious ideas which had been lost since the time of the Reformation-a necessarily mystic and rigidly hierarchic "new Christianity." B ut sci ence, that was the scholars; and industry, that was, in the first place, the working bourgeois, manufacturers, merchan ts, bankers . These bourgeois were, certainly, intended by Saint-Simon to trans form themselves into a kind of public officials, of social trustees; but they were still t o hold,
vis-a-vis
of the workers, a commanding and eco
nomically privileged p osition . The bankers especially were to be called upon to direct the whole of social production by the regula tion of credit. This conception was in exact keeping with a time in which modern industry in France and, with it, the chasm between bourgeoisie and proletariat was only just coming into existence . B u t
Sociali sm: Utopia n and Scientific
689
w ha t Saint-Simon especially lays stress u po n is this : what interests him first, and above all other things, is the lot of the class that is the most numerous and the most poor ( "la classe la plus nombreuse
et la plus pauvre" )
.
Already in his Geneva letters, Saint-Simon lays down the proposi tion that "all men ought to work ." I n the same w ork he recognises also that the Reign of Terror was the reign o f the non-possessing masses . " See, " says he to them, "what happened in France a t the time when your comrades held sway there : they brought about a famin e . " But to recognise the French Revolution as a class war , and not simply one between nobility and bourgeoisie, but between
nobility, bourgeoisie, and the non-possessors, was, in the year 1 80 2 , a most pregnant d iscovery. In 1816, h e declares that politics i s the science of production, and foretells the complete absorption of politics by economics. The knowledge that economic conditions are the basis o f political institutions appears h ere only in embryo. Yet what is here already very plainly expressed is the idea of the future conversion of political rule over men into an administration of things and a direction of processes of production-that is t o say, the "abolition of the state," abou t which recently there has been so m uch noise. Saint-Simon shows the same superiority over his contemporaries,
when in 1 8 1 4 , immediately after the entry of the allies into P a ris,
and again in 1 8 1 5 , during the Hundred Days' War, he proclaims the alliance of France with England, and then of both these coun tries with Germany, a s the only guarantee for the prosperous devel o pment and peace of E urope. To preach to the French in 1 8 1 5 an alliance with the victors of \Vaterloo required as much courage as historical foresight. I f in Saint-Simon we find a comprehensive breadth of view, by virtue o f which almost all the ideas of later Socialists that are not strictly economic are found in him in embryo, we find in Fourier a criticism of the existing conditions of society, genuinely French and witty, but not upon that account any the less thorough. Fourier takes the bourgeoisie, their inspired prophets before the Revolution; and their interested eulogists after it, a t their own word . He lays bare remorselessly the material and moral misery of the bourgeois worl d . He confron ts it with the earlier philosophers' dazzling prom ises of a society in which reason alone should reign, of a civilisation in which happiness should be universal, o f a n illimitable h uman
pe rfectibility, and with the rose-coloured phraseology of the bour
geois ideologists of his time. He points out how everywhere the most pitiful
reality
corresponds
with
the
most
high-sounding
phrases, and he overwhelms this hopeless fiasco of phrases with his . m ordant sarcasm . Fourier is not only a critic; his imperturbably serene nature makes
690
The Later Engels
him a satirist, and assu redly one of the greatest satirists of all time. He depicts, with eq ual power and charm, the swindling speculations that blossomed out upon the downfa l l of the Revolution, and the
shopkeeping spirit preva lent in, and characteristic of, French com merce at that time. Stil l more masterly is his criticism of the bour geois form of the relations between the sexes, and the position of woman in bourgeois society. He was the fi rst to declare that in any
given society the degree of woma n's emancipa tion is the natural measure of the general emancipation .
B u t Fourier is at his greatest in his conception of the history of
society. He divides its whole course, thus far, into fou r stages of evo l u tion-savagery, ba rba rism, the patriarcha te, civilisation. The last is identical with the so-called civil, or bourgeois, society of today i.e., with the socia l order that came in with the sixteenth century. He proves "that the civilised stage raises every vice practised by bar barism in a simple fashion into a form of existence, complex, ambiguous, equivocal, h ypocritica l"-that civilisa tion moves in "a
vicious circle, " i n contradictions which it constantly reproduces
without being a ble to solve them; h ence it constantly a rrives at the very opposite to that which it wants to attain, or pretends to want to attain, so that, e.g., " under civilisa tion poverty is b orn of super abundance itself."
Fou rier, as we see, uses the dia lectic method in the same mas terly way as his contemporary, Hegel. Using these same dia lectics, he argues against the ta lk a bout il limitable human perfectibility, tha t every historical phase has its period of ascent and a l so its period of descent, and he app lies this observation to the future of the whole human race. As Kant in troduced into natura l science the idea of the u ltimate destruction of the earth, Fourier introduced into historical science that of the ul tim a te destruction of the human race. Whi lst in France the hurricane of the Revolution swept over the land, in England a quieter, but not on that account less tremen dous, revolution was going on. Stearn and the new tool-ma king machinery were transforming manufacture into modern ind ustry, a n d thus revolutionising the whole founda tion of bourgeois society. The sluggish march of development of the manufacturing period changed into a veritable storm and stress period of prod uction. With constantly increasing swiftness t h e spl itting-up of society in to large capitalists and non-possessing proletarians went on . Between
these, instead of the former sta ble middle class, an unstable mass of artisans and small shopkeepers, t h e most fluctua ting portion of the population, now led a precarious existence.
The new mode of production was, as yet, only at the beginning of its period of ascent; as yet it was the normal, regular method of
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
691
production-the only one possible u n d er existing conditions. Never th el ess, even then it was producing crying social abuses-the h erd ing together of a h o m el ess population in the worst quarters o f the large towns; the loosening o f all traditional moral bonds, of patriar chal subordin a t ion, o f family relations; overwor k, especially of women and children, to a f rightful extent; complete d emoralisation of the working class, suddenly flung into altoget h er new conditions, from t h e country into the town, from agriculture into mod ern industry, from stable cond itions of existence into insecure ones that changed from day to day. At this juncture there came forward as a reformer a manufacturer
29 y ears old-a man of almost sublim e, childli ke simplicity of char acter, and a t the same time one o f the few born leaders of m en . Robert O w en h a d adopted t h e teaching o f t h e materialistic philoso phers : that man's character i s the product, on the one hand, of her-edity; on the other, of the environmen t of the individual during his lifetime, and especially during his p eriod o f d evelopment. I n the industrial revolution most of his class saw only chaos and confusion , and the opportunity o f fishing in th es e troubled waters and m a king large fortunes quickly. He saw in it the opportun ity of putting into
practice his favourite th eory, a n d so of bringing order out of chaos .
He had already tried it with success, as superintendent of more than five hundred men in a Manchester factory. From 1 800 to 1 8 29 , he directed the grea t cotton mill a t New Lanar k, in Scotland, as man aging partner, along the same lines, but with greater freedom of a c t io n and w ith a s u c c ess that made him a European reputation . A population, originally consisting of the most diverse a n d , for the mo s t part, very d em oralised el em ents, a population that gradually grew to 2 , 5 00 , he turned into a model colony, in which drun ken� n ess, pol ice, m agistrates, lawsuits, poor laws, charity, were un known . And all this simply by placing the p eople in c ondi tions worthy o f h u m a n b eings, and especially b y carefully bringing up t h e rising g eneration. H e was the founder o f infant schools, and introduced them first at New Lanark. At the age of two the children came t o school, where t h ey enjoyed t h emselves so m u c h that t h ey could
scarcely be got home again . \Vhilst his competitors wor ked their
people thirteen o r fourteen h o u rs a day, in New Lanark the work ing-day was only ten and a half hours. "'-hen a crisis in cotton stopped wor k for fo ur month s , his workers received their full wages all the time. And with all this the business more than doubled in value, and to the last y i elded large profits to its proprietors. I n spite of all this, Owen was not content. The existence which h e secured for his workers was, in his eyes, still far from b eing worthy of human beings . "Th e p eopl e were slaves a t my merc y . "
Th e relatively favourable conditions in which h e h a d placed them
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The Later Engels
were still far from a llowing a rational development of the character
and of the intel lect in all directions, much less of the free exercise of all their faculties . "An d yet, the working part of this population of
2. , 5 00 persons was daily producing as much rea l wealth for society
as, l ess than half a century before, i t would have required the · work
ing part of a population of 600,000 to create. I a sked myself, what
became of the difference between the wea lth consumed by 2 , 500 persons a n d t h a t w h i c h woul d h a v e b e e n consumed by 600,000? " 3
T h e answer was clear. I t had b e e n used to p a y t h e proprietors of
the esta blishment 5 per cent on the capital they had laid out, in
addition to o v e r £ 3 00,000 clear profit . And t h a t which held for
New Lanark held to a sti ] ] greater extent for an the factories i n
Engla n d . " I f this n e w wea l t h h a d not b e e n created by m achinery,
imperfectly as it has been applied, the wars of Europe, i n opposi
tion to Napoleon, and to support the a ristocratic principles of
society, c o u l d not h ave been maintained. And yet this new power was the creation of the working class . "4 To them, therefore, the
fruits of this new power belonged. Th e newly-crea ted gigantic pro
ductive forces, hitherto used only t o enrich individuals and to
enslave the m a sses, offered to Owen the foundations for a recon struction of society; they were destined, as the common property of
a l l, to be worked for the common good of an . Owen's communism was based upon this purely b usiness founda tion, the o utcome, so to say, of commercial calculation . Through
out, it maintained this practical character. Thus, in 1 8 2 3 , Owen
p roposed the relief of the distress in Ireland by communist colonies,
a n d drew u p complete estimates of costs of founding them, yearly expenditure, and probable revenue. And in ·h is definite plan · for the
future, the technical working out of details i s managed with such
practical knowledge-ground plan, front and side a n d bird's-eye views all included-that the Owen method of so cial reform once accepted, there is from the practica l point of v i e w little to b e said
a ga inst the actua l arrangement of detail s . .
His advance in the direction of communism was the turning
point i n Owen's life. As long as he was simply a p h i l anth ropi s t, he
was rewarded with nothing but wealth, applause, h onour, and glory . He was the most popu lar man in E urop e. N ot only men of his own
class, b u t statesmen and princes l istened to h i m approvingl y. B u t
when h e came o u t with h i s communist theories t h a t w a s quite
another thing . Three great obstacles seemed to him especial ly to block the path to soc i a l reform : private property, religion, the pres3. From "The R e v o l u t i o n i n Mind and Pract ice," p. 2 1 , a m e m o rial a d d ressed t o all the "red Republicans, Commu nists and Socialists of Europe," and sent to the provi s i o n a l govern ment of
France, 1 8 4 8 , a n d a l s o " t o Queen Vic toria and her responsible advisers. "
[Engels] 4. Note,
l.c., p.
2 2 . [Engels]
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
693
ent form of marriage. He knew what confronted him if he attacked these-outlawry, excommunication from official society, the loss of his whole social position . But nothing of this prevented him from attacking them without fear of consequences, and what he had fore seen happened. B anished from official society, with a conspiracy of silence again s t him in the press, ruined by his unsuccessful com munist experiments i n America, in which he sacrificed all h i s for tune, he turned d irectly to the working class and continued working in their midst for thirty years . Every social movement, every real advance in England on behalf of the workers links i tself on to the name of Robert Owen . He forced through i n 1 8 1 9, after five years' fighting, the first law limiting the hours o f labour of wom en a n d children in factories. He was president o f t h e first Congress a t which a l l t h e Trade U n ions o f England u n i ted i n a single great trade association . He introduced as transition measures to the com plete comm unistic organisation of society, on the one hand, co-oper ative societies for retail trade and productio n . These have since that time, a t least, given practical proof that the merchant and the man ufacturer are socially quite unnecessary. O n the other hand, he
introduced l a bo u r bazaars for t h e exchange of t h e products of labour through the medium of labour-notes, whose unit was a single hour of work; institutions necessarily doomed t o failure, but com pletely an ticipating Proudhon 's bank o f exchange of a much later period, and differing entirely from this in that it did not claim to be the panacea for all social ills, but only a first step towards a much more radical revolution o f society. The U topians' m ode o f thought has for a long time governed the so c ialist i deas of the nin eteenth century, and still governs some of th em. Until very recently all French and English Socialists did homage to it. The earlier German communism, including that of \Veitling, was o f the same school . To all these socialism is the expression o f absolute truth, reason and j ustice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all t h e world by virtue o f i t s own power. An d as absolute truth is independent of time, space, and of the historical development o f man, i t is a mere accident when and where it is dis covered . \Vith all this, a bsolute truth, reason , and justice are differ ent with the founder of each different s chool . And as �ach one's special kind of absol ute truth, reason, and j u stice is again condi tioned by his s ubjective understanding, his conditions of existence, the measure o f his knowledge and his intellectual training, there is no other ending possible in this con flict o f absolute truths than that they shall be mutually exclusive one o f the other . Hence, from this nothing could come but a kind o f eclectic, average socialism, which, as a matter o f fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds o f m ost o f the socialist workers in France a n d England. Hence, a
694
The Later Engels
mish-mash al lowing of the most manifold shades of opInIon; a
mish-mash of such critica l statements, economic theories, pictures
of future society by the founders of different sects, as excite a mini mum of opposition; a mish-mash which is the more easily brewed
the more the definite sharp edges of the individua l constituents are
rubbed down in the stream of debate, like rounded pebbles in a broo k .
T o m a k e a science of socialism, it h a d first t o b e placed upon
a
real basis .
II I n the meantime, along with a n d after the French philosophy of
the eighteeenth century had arisen the new German philosophy,
culminating in Hege l . Its greatest merit was the taking up again of
dialectics as the highest form of reasoning. The old Greek philoso phers were alI born natural dia lecticians, and Aristotle, the most
encyclopaedic inteIIect of them, had already analysed the most
essential forms of dia lec tic t hought. The newer phi losophy, on the
other hand, although in it also dialectics had briJIiant exponents
( e .g . , Descartes and Spinoza ) , had, especially through English influ
ence, become more and more rigidly fixed in the so-calIed metaphys
ical mode of reasoning, by which a lso the French of the eighteenth century were a lmost wholIy dominated, at all events in their special
phi losophica l work . Outsid e phi losophy in the restricted sense, the French nevertheless produced masterpieces of dialectics . \Ve need
only calI to mind Diderot' s Le Neveu de Rameau and Rousseau's Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inegalite parmi les hommes. We give here, in brief, the essential character of these two
modes of thought.
\Vhen we consider and reflect upon Nature at large or the history of mankind or our own intellectual activity, at first we see the picture of an endless entanglement of relations and reactions, permutation s and combinations, in which nothing remains what, where and as it
was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes
a way. \Ve see, therefore, at fi rst the picture as a whole, with its individual parts stiJI more or less kept in the background; we observe the movements, transitions, connections, rather than the
things that move, comb ine and are connected. This primitive, naive but intrinsicialIy correct conception of the world is that of ancient
Greek philosophy, and was first clearly form u lated by Heraclitus :
everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly chang ing, constantly coming into being and passing away.
But this conception, correctly as it expresses the genera l character
of the picture of appearances as a w hole, does not suffice to explain
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
695
the details o f which this picture is made up, and so long as we do not understand these, we have not a clear idea of the whole picture.
In order to understand these details we must detach them fro m their natural or historical connection and examine each one sepa rately, its nature, special causes, effects, etc. This is, primarily, the task o f natural science and historical research : branches o f science which the Greeks of classical times, on very good grounds, relegated to a subordinate position, because they had first o f all to collect materials for these sciences to work upon . A certain amount of .nat ural and h istorical material must be collected before there can be any critical analysis, comparison, and arrangement in classes, orders, and species. The foundations o f the exact natural sciences were, therefore,
first worked
out by the Greeks o f the Alexandrian
period,5 and later on, in the �-1iddle Ages, by the Arabs . Real natu ral science dates from the second half of the fifteenth century, and thence onward it has advanced with constantly increasing rapidity. The analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processes and obj ects i n definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy o f organic bodies i n their manifold forms these were the fundamental conditions o f the gigantic strides in our knowledge o f Nature that have been made during the last four hundred years. But this method of work has also left us a s legacy the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast whole; o f observing them in repose, not i n motion; as constants, not as essentially variables; in their death, n o t in their life . A n d when this w a y of looking a t th ings was transferred b y Bacon a n d Locke f r o m natural science to philosophy, it b egot the narrow, metaphysical mode o f thought pecul iar to the last century. To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. " His communi
cation is 'yea, yea; nay, nay'; for whatsoever is more than the se cometh of evil . " For him a thing either .exists or does not exist;
a
thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else . Positive· and negative a bsolutely exclude one another; cause and effect stand i n a rigid antithesis one to the other. At first sight this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous, because it i s that o f so-called sound common sense . Only sound comS. The Alexandrian period 0 f t h e devel opment of science comprises the period extending from the third century B.C. to the seventh century A.D. It derives its name from the town of Alexandria in Egypt, which was one o f the most
i m portant centres o f international eco nomic intercourse at that time. In the Alexandrian period, mathematics (Eu clid and Archimedes ) , geography, as tronomy, anatomy, physiology, etc., at tained considerable development.
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The Later Engels
mon sense , respectable fellow that h e is, i n the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out i n to the wide world of research . And the metaphysical m o de of thought, j u s tifiable and necessary a s i t is in a number o f domains whose extent varies according to the nature of t h e particular obj ect of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it beco m es 'o ne-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradic tion s . In
the contemplation of individual things, it forgets the
connection between them; in the contemplation o f their existence, it forgets the beginning an d end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion . It cannot see the wood for the trees . For everyday purposes we know and can say, e . g . , whether an animal is alive or n o t . But, upon closer inquiry, we find t h at this is, in many cases, a very complex question, as th e j urists know very wel l . They have cudgelled their brains in vain to discover a rational limit bey on. which the killing of the child in its mother's womb is murder. It is just as impossi ble to determine absolutely the moment of death, for physiology proves that death i s not an ins tantaneous, momentary phenomenon, but a very protracted process . I n like manner, every organic being i s every moment the same and not the same; every moment it assimilates matter supplied from without, and gets rid of other matter; every moment some cells of its body d i e and others build themselves anew; in a longer or shorter time the matter of its body is completely renewed, and i s replaced by other molecules o f matter, so that every organic being is always it self, and yet something other than itself. Further, we find upon closer investigation th at the two poles of a n antithesis, positive and negative, e .g . , are a s inseparable as they are opposed, and tha t despite all their opposition, they mutually interpenetrate. And we find, in like manner, that cause and effect are conceptions which only hold good in their application to indi vidual cases ; but as soon as we consider the individual cases in their general connection with the universe as a whole, they run into each other, and they become confounded when we contemplate that uni versal action and reaction in which causes and effects are eternally changing places, so that what is effect here and now will be caus e there and then, and
vice versa.
None of these processes and modes of thought enters into the framework of metaphysical reasoning. Dialectics, on the othe r hand, comprehends things and their representations, ideas, in their essen tial connection, concatenation, motion, origin, and endin g . Such processes as those mentioned above are, therefore, so many corro borations of its own method of procedure. Nature is the proof of dialectics, and it must b� · said for modern science that it has furnished this proof with very rich materials
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
697
increasing daily, and thus has shown that, in the last resort, Nature works dialectically and not metaphysically; that she does n ot move
in the eternal oneness of a perpetually recurring circle, but goes
through a real historical evolution .- In this connection Darwin must be named before all others . H e dealt the metaphysical conception of Nature the heaviest blow by his proof that all organic beings, plants , animals, and man himself, are the products of a process of evolution goin g on through millions o f years . B ut the naturalists who have l earned to think dialectically are few and far b etween, and this conflict of the results of discovery with preconceived modes of thinking explains the endless confusion now reigning in theoreti cal natural science, the despair of teachers as well as learners, of authors and readers alike. An exact representation of the universe, of its evolution, of the development of mankind, and of the reflection o f this evolution in the minds of men, can therefore only be obtained by the methods o f dialectics with its constant regard to the innumerable actions and reactions of l ife and death, of progressive or retrogressive changes. And in this spirit the new German philosophy has worked . Kant began his career by resolving the stable solar system of Newton and i ts eternal duration, after the famous initial impulse had once been given, into the resul t of
a
historic process, the formation of the sun
and all the planets out o f a rotating nebulous mass. From this he a t the same time drew the conclusion that, given this origin o f the solar system, i ts future death followed of necessity. His theory half a century later was established mathematically by Laplace, and half a century after that the spectroscope proved the existence in space o f such incandescent masses of g a s in various stages of condensation . Th is new German philosophy culminated in the Hegelian system. In this system-and herein is its great merit-for the first time the whole world, natural, historical, intellectual. is represented as a process, i . e . , as in consta n t motion, change, transformation, develop ment; and the attem p t is made to trace out the internal connection tha t makes a contin uous whol e o f all this movement and develop men t . F rom this point of view the history of mankind n o longer appeared as a wild whirl o f senseless deeds of violence, all equally condemnable at the judgement-seat of mature philosophic reason and which are best forgotten as quickly as possible, but as the proc� ess of evolution of man himself. It was now the task of the intellect to follow the gradual march of this process through all its devious ways, and to trace out the inner law running through all its appar ently accidental phenomena . That the Hegelian system did n o t solve the problem it pro� pounded is here immaterial. Its epoch-making merit was that it p ro pounded the problem. This problem i s one that no single individual
698
The Later Engels
will ever be able to solve. Although Hegel was-with Saint-Simon
'-the most encyclopaedic mind of his time, yet h e was limited,
first, by the necessarily limited extent of h is own knowledge and,
second, by the limited extent and depth of the knowledge and
conceptions of his age . To t h ese l i mits a third must be added . H egel
was an idealis t . To him the thoughts within his brain were not the more or less abstract pictures of actual things and processes, but,
conversely, things and t h eir e volu tion were onl y the realised pictu res
of the "Idea," existing somewhere from eternity before the world
was . This way of th inking turned everything upside down, and com
pletely reversed the actual connection of things in the worl d . Cor
rectly and ingenious l y as many individ ual groups of facts were
grasped by Hegel, yet, for the reasons just given, there is much that
is botched, artificial, laboured, in a word, wrong in p oint of detail.
The Hegelian system, in i tse lf, was a colossal miscarriage-but it
was also the last of its k in d . It was suffering, in fact, from an inter
nal and incurable contradiction. Upon the one hand, its essential
proposition was the conception that h uman history is a process of evolution, which, by its very nature, cannot find its intel lectual final term in the discovery of any so-called absolute truth . But, on the
other hand, it laid claim to being the very essence of this absolute
truth. A system of natural and historical knowledge, embracing every thing, and final for all time, is a contradiction to the fundamental
law of dialectic reasoning. This law, indeed, by no means excludes,
but, on the contrary, includes the idea that the systematic knowl
edge of the external universe can make giant strides from age to
age .
The perception of the fundamental con tradiction in German ide
alism led necessarily back to materialism, but,
simply metaphysical,
exclusively
mechanical
nota bene, not to the
materialism of the
eighteenth century. Old materialism looked upon all previous his tory as a crude heap of irrationality and violence; modern material
ism sees in i t the process of evol ution of human i ty, and aims at dis
covering the laws thereof. \Vith the French of the eighteenth cen
tury, and even with Hegel, the conception obtaine d of Nature as -a
whole, moving in narrow circles, and for ever imm utable, with its
eternal celestial b odies, as Newton, and unal terable organic species,
as Linnaeus, taught. Modern materialism em braces the more recent discoveries of natural science, according to which Nature also has its
history in time, the celestial bodies, like the organic species that,
under favourable conditions, people th em, being born and peris h _
ing. And even if Nature, as a whole, m ust still be said to move in
recurrent cycles, these cycles assume infinitely larger dimensions . In
both aspects, modern materialism is essentially dialectic, and n o longer requires t h e assistance of that sort o f philosophy which,
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
699
queen-like, pretended to rule the remaining mob of sciences. As soon as each special science is bound to make clear its position in the great totality of things and of our knowledge of things, a special science dealing with this totality is superfluous or unnecessary. That which still survives o f all earlier philosophy is the science o f thought a n d i t s laws-formal logic and dialectics . Everything e l s e i s subsumed in t h e posi tive science o f Nature and history. \Vhilst, however, the revolution in the conception of Nature could only be made in proportion to the corresponding positive materials furnished by research, already much earlier certain histori cal facts 11 ad occurred which led to a decisive change in the concep tion of history. In 1 8 3 1 , the first working-class rising took place in Lyons; between 18 3 8 and
1 8 4 2 , the
first national working-class
movement, that o f the English Chartists, reached its heig h t . The class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie came to the f ront in the history ofthe most advanced countries in Europe, in propor tion to the development, u pon the one hand, o f modern industry, upon th e other, o f the newly-acquired political supremacy of the bourgeoisie . Facts more and more strenuously gave the lie to the teachings of bourgeois economy as to the identity of the interests of cap ital and labour, as to the universal harmony and universal pros perity that would be the cons equence of unbridled competition . All these things could no longer be ignored, any more than the French and English socialism, which was their theoretical, though very im perfect, expression. But the old idealist conception of history, which was n ot yet dislodged, knew n othing o f class struggles based u pon economi c interests, know nothing of economic interests; production and all economic relations appeared in it only as incidental, sub ordin;Ite elements in the "history o f civilisation . "
The new facts made imperative a new examination of a n past his
tory . Th en it was seen that
all
past history, with the exception of its
primitive stages, was the history of class struggles; that these warring classes
of
society
are
always
the
products
production and of exchange-in a word, o f the
of
the
modes
of
economic conditions
of their time; that the economic structure o f society always fur nishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explana tion of the whole superstru'cture of juridical and political institutions as wen as of t h e religious, philosophical, and other ideas of a given historical period. Hegel had freed history from metaphysics-he had made it dialectic; but his conception of history was essentially idealisti c . But now ideal ism was driven from its last refuge, the philosophy of history; now a materialistic treat ment of history was propounded, and a method found of explaining man ' s "knowing" by his "being, " instead of, as heretofore, his "being" by his "knowing."
700
The Later E ngels
From that time forward socia lism was no longer an accidental dis
covery of this or that ingenious brain, but the necessary outcome of
the struggle between two historically developed classes-the prole tariat and the bourgeoisie. Its task was no longer to manufacture
a
system of society as perfect as possible, b ut to examine the h istori
co-economic succession of events from which these c lasses, and their
antagonism had of necessity sprung, and to d iscover in the eco n o m ic cond itions thus created the means of ending the conflict. B u t the socialism o f earlier days w a s a s incompatible w i t h t h i s ma teri a l istic conception as the conception of Nature of the French materi
alists was with dial ectics and modern natural science. The socialism
. of earlier days certai n l y criticised the existing capitalistic mode of production and its consequences . B ut i t could not explain them,
and, therefore, could not get the mastery of them . It could only
simpl y reject them as bad. The more strongl y this earlier socia l ism
denounced the exploitation of the working class, inevitable under capitalism, t h e l ess able was i t clearly to show in w h a t this exploita
tion consisted and h ow it a rose . B u t for this it was n ecessary- ( 1 )
to present the capita listic method of production in its h i s torical
connection
and
its
inevitableness
during
a
particular h istorical
period, a n d therefore, also, to present its inevitable downfa ll; and
( :z. ) to lay bare its essential character, which was still a secre t . This
was done by the discovery of
su.rplus value . It was sh own that the
appropriation of unpaid labour i s the basis of the capita l ist mode of
production and of the exploitation of the worker th at occurs under
it; that even if the capitalist buys the labour power of h i s la bourer
at its full value as a commodity on the market, he yet extracts more
value from it than he paid for; and that in the ultimate analysis this
surplus value forms those sums of value from which are heaped up
the constantl y increasing masses o f capital in the hands of the pos
sessing c lasses . The genesis of capitalist production and the produc
tion o f capital were both explained .
These two great discoveries, the materialistic conception of his
tory and the revelation o f the secret of capitalistic p roduction
through surplus value, we owe to Marx. \Vi t h these discoveries socialism beca me a science. The next t h i n g was to work out a l l its details and relation s .
III The materialis
� conception
o f history starts from the proposition
that the p �oductlOn of the means to support h um a n life and ' next to p roductIOn, the ex � hange of t h i ngs produced, i s the basis o f all
�
SOCIa l struct � re; t at m every soci ety that has appeared in history the manner m whIch wealth is distri bu ted and society divided i n t
�
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
701
classes o r orders is d ependent upon w h a t is produced, h o w it is pro d u ced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view the final causes of all social changes and political revol utions a r e to be sought, n o t in m en's brains, n o t i n men's bet t er insight i n t o eternal truth and justic e, b ut in changes i n the mod es of pro d u ction and exchange. They are to be sough t not in t h e philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch . The growing percep tion that existing social institutions are unreason a ble and unjust, that reason has become unreason and right wrong,6 is only proof that in th e m o d es of prod u ction and exchange cha n g es have silently taken place with which the social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer in keeping. From this it a l s o follows t h a t th e means o f getting r i d o f the incongruities t h a t ha v e been brought to light must also he pres ent, in a more or l ess d ev eloped condition, within the changed modes of produ ction themselve s . These means are not to b e invented by d eduction from fundam ental principles, but are to b e discovered in the stubborn facts o f the existing system of productio n . \Vhat i s , t h en, t h e position o f modern socialism in this connec tion ? The pres en t structure of soc i ety-this is n ow pretty gen erally conceded-is the creation of the ruling class o f today, of the bour geoisie. The mode of production p ec uliar to the bourgeoisie, known, since Marx, as the capitalist mode o f production, was incompatible with the feudal system, with the privi l eg es it conferred upon indi viduals, entire so cial ranks and local corporations, a s w el l as with the h ereditary ties of subordination which constituted the framework of its s o cial organisatio n . The bou rgeoisie b roke up the feudal system and built upon its ruins the capitalist order o f society, the :ingdom o f free comp etition, o f personal liberty, o f the equality, before th e law, of all commodity owners, of all t h e rest of t h e capi t a list blessings. Thenceforward t he capitalist mode o f production could d evelop in freedom . S in c e stea m , machiner y, and the making of ma chines by m a chin ery transformed the older manufacture into modern industry, the productive forces evolved under the guidance o f the bourgeoisie developed with
a
rapidity and in a
d egree
unheard of before . B ut j us t a s the older manufacture, in its time, and handicra ft, becoming more developed under its influen ce, h ad com e into collision with the feudal trammels of the guilds, so now modern industry, in its more complete d evelopment, comes into col lision with the bounds within w hich the capitalistic mode of p ro duction holds it confined . The n ew productive forces have already o utgrown the capitalistic mode of using th em . And this con fl i ct between produ ct i v e for ces and m o d es of production is not a conflict 6.
Mephistopheles, in Goethe's Faust.
702
The Later Engels
engendered in the mind of man, like tha t between original sin a n d divine j ustice. I t exists, i n f a c t, objectively, o u t s i d e u s, independ ently of the will and actions even of the men tha t have brought it o n . l\Iodern socialism is nothing but the reflex, in thought, of this conflict in fact; its ideal reflection in the minds, first, of the class directly suffering under i t, the working class . Now, in what does this conflict consist? Before capita listic production, i.e., in
the Middle Ages,
the
system o f petty ind ustry obtained generally, based upon the private property of the labourers in their means o f production; in the coun try, the agriculture of the small peasant, freeman or serf; in the towns, the handicrafts organised in guilds. The instruments of
la bour-land, agricultural implements, the workshop, the tool were the instruments of labour of single individua ls, adapted for the
use of one worker, and, therefore, of necessity, sma ll, dwarfish, cir
cumscribed. But, for this very reason they belonged, as a rule, to the
producer himself. To concentrate these sca ttered, limited means of prod uction, to enlarge them, to turn them into the powerful levers of production of the present day-this was precisely the historic
role o f capitalist production and of its upholder, the bourgeoisi e. In the fourth section of Capita[7 Marx has explained in detail how since the fifteenth century this has been historically worked out
through the three phases o f simple co-operation, manufacture and modem industry. But the bou rgeoisie, as is a lso shown there, could not transform these puny means of prod uction into mighty pro duc tive forces without transforming them, a t the same time, from means of production o f the individual into
social means o f produc
tion only workable by a collectivity of men. The spinning-wheel,
the hand-loom, the blacksmith 's ham mer, were replaced by the spin
ning-machine, the power-loom, the steam-hammer; the individual workshop, by the factory implying the co-operation o f hundreds and thousands o f workmen . In like manner, prod uction itself changed
from a series of individual into a series of social acts, and the prod ucts from individual to social prod ucts : The yarn, the cloth, the
metal articles that now came out of the factory, were the j oint prod
uct of many workers, through whose hands they had successively to pass before they were ready . No one person could say of them; " I made that; this is
my prod uct."
But where, in a given society, the fundamental form of produc tion is that spon taneous division of labour which creeps in gradually and not upon any preconceived plan, there the products take on the form of commodities, whose mutual exchange, buying and sel ling, enable the individual producers to satisfy their manifold wants. And this was the case in the Middle Ages. Th e peasant, e .g.; sold to the 7. See pp. 38 4-403 .
above.
[R. T.]
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
7 03
artisan agricultural products and bought from him the products o f h a n d i cra ft. I n t o t h i s society of individual producers, of commodity producers, the new mode of production thrust itself. In the midst of the old division of labour, grown up spontaneously and upon
definite plan,
no
which had governed the whole o f society, now arose
division of lab o ur u pon a
as organised in the factory;
side by side with
definite plan, in dividual production
appeared
social
producti o n .
T h e products o f b o t h were sold in t h e s a m e market, a n d , therefore, a t p rices a t least approximately equal . But orga nisation upon
a
definite plan was stronger than spontaneous division of labo u r . The factories working with the combined social forces of a collectivity of individuals produced th eir commodities far m o re cheaply than the individual small producers . Individual production succumbed in one department after another. Socialised production revolutionised all the old methods o f production . But its revolutionary character was, a t the same time, so little recognised that it was, on the c ontrary, introduced as a means of increasing and developing the production o f commodities. \Vhen it a rose, it found ready-made, and made lib eral use of, certain machinery for the production and exchange of co m m odities : merchants' capital, handicraft, wage-labour. Socia lised production thus in troducing itself as a new form of the production o f commodities, i t was a matter o f course that under it the old forms o f appropriation remained i n full swing, and were applied to i t s products a s well . I n the mediaeval stage of evolution of the production of com m odities, the question as to the o wner o f the product of labour could not arise. The individual producer, as a rule, had, from raw material belonging to h i mself, and generally his own handiwork, produced i t with his own tools, by the labour o f his own hands or o f his family. There was rio need for him to appropriate the new product. It belonged wholly to h i m , a s a matter o f course . His prop erty in the product was, therefore, based upon his own labour. Even where external help was used, this was, as a rule, of l i ttle impor tance, and very generally was compensated by something other than
wages. The apprentices and j ourneymen of the guilds worked less; for board and wages than for education, in order that they migh t become master craftsmen themselves.
Then came th e concentration o f the means o f production and of
the producers in large workshops and manufactories, their transfor mation into actual s ocialised means of production and socialised producers . But the socialised producers and means of production a n d their products were still treated, after this change, j us t as they h a d been before, i . e . , as the means o f production and the products o f individual s . Hitherto, th e owner of the instruments of labour had himself appropriated the product, because, a s a rule, it was his own
704
The Later Engels
product and the assistance of others was the exception . Now the owner o f the instruments o f labour always appropriated to himself the prod uct, a l though i t was no longer his prod uct but exclusively the product o f the labour of others. Thus, the products now pro duced soci a l l y w ere not appropriated by those who h a d actually set in motion the means of production and actually produced the com modities, but by the capitalis ts. The means of production, and pro duction itself, had become in essence socialised . B ut they were sub jecte d to a form of appropriation which presupposes the private pro duction o f individuals, under which, therefore, everyone owns his own product a n d brings it to market. The mode of production i s s u b j e c t e d t o t h i s form of appropriation, although i t abolishes t h e conditions u p o n w h i c h t h e latter rests .s This contradiction , which gives to the new m o de of production
contains the germ of the whole of the social antagonisms of today. The greater t h e mastery obtained by its capitalistic character,
t h e new mode of production over all important fields o f production and in all manufacturing countries, the more i t reduced individual to an insignificant residuum, the more clearly was brought out the incompatibility of socialised production with capi talistic appropriation.
production
T h e fi r s t capitalists found, as w e h a v e said, alongside o f oth er forms of labour, wage-labour ready-made for them on the market. But it was exceptional, complementary, accessory, transitory wage lab our. The agricultural labourer, though, upon occasion, he hired himself out by the day, had a few acres of h i s own land on which he could a t all events live at a pinch. The guilds were so organized that the j o urneyman of today became the master o f tomorro w . B u t all this changed a s soon as the means o f production became socialised a n d concentrated in the hands of capitalists. The means o f produc tion, as well as the product, of the individual producer became more and more worthless; there was nothing left for him but to turn wage - worker under the capitalist. \Vage-I a bour, aforetime the exception and accessory, now became the rule a n d basis o f all pro duction; aforetime c omplementary, it now became the sole remain ing function of the workers . The wage-worker for a time became a wage-worker for life . The number of these permanent wage-workers was further enormously increased by the breaking-up of the feudal 8. I t is hardly necessary i n this connec tion to point out that, even i f the form
of appropriation remains the same, the character o f the appropri ation i � just as much revolutionised as production is by the changes described above. It is, of course, a very different matter whether I appropriate to myself my own product or that of another. Note in passing that wage-labour, which con-
tains the whole capitalistic mode of production i n embryo, i s very ancient; in a sporadic, scattered form i t ex isted for centuries alongside o f slave-labour. But the embryo could duly develop into the capitalistic mode o f production only when the necessary historical pre furn ished. been conditions had
[Engels]
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
705
system that occurred a t the same time, by the disbanding of the retainers of the feudal lords, the eviction o f the peasants from their homesteads, etc. The separation was made complete between the
means o f production con c entrated in the hands of the capitalists,
on the one side, and the producers, possessing nothing b u t their
The contradiction between socialised production and capitalistic appropriation manifested itself as the antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie. labour-power, on the other.
We have s een that the capitalistic mode of production thrust its way into a society o f commodity-producers, of individual producers, wh ose social bond was the exchange of their product s . B ut every society based upon the production of commodities has this peculiar ity : that the producers have lost control over their own social inter relations. Each man produces for himself with such means of pro duction as he may happen to have, and for such exchange as he may require to satisfy his remaining wan t s . No one knows how m uch of his particular article is coming on the market, nor h ow much of it will be w anted . NO' one knows whether his individual praduct will meet a n actual demand, whether he will be able to make goad his costs of p roduction or even to sell his commodity at all. Anarchy reigns in socialised production . B u t the production of commadities, like every ather form of pro ductian, has its peculiar, inherent laws inseparable from it; and these laws . work, despite anarchy , in and through anarchy. They reveal themselves in the only persistent form of social inter-rela tians, i .e ., in exchange, and here they affect the individual producers as compulsory laws o f competition. They are, at first, unknawn to these producers themselves, and h a v e to be discovered by them gradually and as the result of experience. They work themselves o u t, therefore, independently of t h e p ro ducers, and in antagonism to them, as inexorable natural laws af their particular form of produc tion . The product governs the producers . In mediaeval society, especially in the earlier centuries, produc tion was essentially directed towards satisfying the wants of the
individual . It satisfied, in the main, only the wants af the producet and his family . \Vhere relations of personal dependence existed; as in the country, it also helped to satisfy the wants of the feudal lor d .
I n all this there was, therefore, n o exchange; the products, conse qu ently, did not assume the character of commodities. The family of the peasant produced almost everything they wanted : clothes and furniture, as well as means of subsislence. Only when it began to produce more than was sufficient to supply its own wants and the payments in kind to the feudal lord, only then did it also produce commodities. This surplus, thrown into socialised exchange and affered for sale, became cammadities .
706
The Later E ngels
The artisans of the towns, it is true, had from the first to produce
for exchange. B ut they, also, themselves supplied the greatest part of their own individual wants. They had gardens and plots of land .
They turned their cattle o u t into the communal forest, which, also,
yielded them timber and firing. The women spun flax, wool, and so
forth . Produ ction for the purpose of exchange, production of com
modities, was only in its infancy. Hence, exchange was restricted,
the market narrow, the methods of production stable; there was
local exclusiveness without, l ocal unity within; the Mark in the coun try; in the town, the guild.
B ut with the extension of the production of commodities, and
especially with the introduction of the capitalist mode of produc
tion, the laws of commodity production, hitherto latent, came into
action more openly and with greater force . The old bonds were loos
ened, the old exclusive limits broken through, the producers were more and more turned into independent, isolated producers of com
moditie s . It became apparent that the production of society at large
was ruled by absence of plan, by accident, by anarchy; and this anarchy grew to greater and greater height. B u t the chief means by
aid of which the capitalist mode of production intensified this
anarchy of socialised production was the exact opposite of anarchy. It was the increasing organisation of production, u pon a social basis,
in every individual productive establishment. By this, the old, peace
ful, stable condition of things was ended . Wherever this organisa tion of prod uction was introduced into a branch of industry, it
brooked no other method of production by its side. The field of labour became a battle-ground . The great geographical discoveries,
and the colonisation following upon them, multiplied markets and
quickened the transformation of h and icraft into manufacture. The
war did not simply break out between the individual producers of particular localities . The local struggles begot in their turn national
conflicts, the commercial wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries .
Finally, modern industry and the opening of the world market
made the struggle universal, and a t the same time gave it an
unheard-of virulenc e . Advantages in natural or artificial conditions
of production now decide the existence or non-existence of individ
ual capitalists, as well as of whole industries and countrie s . He that
falls i s remorselessly cast aside. It is the Darwinian struggle of the individual for existence transferred from Nature to society with
intensified violence. The conditions of existence natural to the
animal appear as the final term of human developmen t . The contra diction between socialised production and capitalistic appropriation
now presents itself as an antagonism between the organisation of
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
707
production in the ind iv id ual workshop and the anarchy of produc t ion in society generally. The capitalistic mode of production moves in these two forms of the antagonism immanent to it from its very origin. It is never able
to get out of that "vicious circle" which Fourier had already discov ered. \Vhat Fourier could not, indeed, see in his time is tha t this circle is gradually narrowing; that the movement becomes m ore and more a spiral, and must come to an end, like the movement of the
planets, by collision with the centre. It is the compelling force of anarchy in the production of society a t large that more and more completely turns the great majority o f men into proletarians; and i t
is the masses of the proletariat again w h o w i l l finally p u t an end to
anarchy in production . It is the compelling force of anarchy in social production that turns t h e limitless perfectibility o f machinery
under modern industry into a compulsory law by which every indi vidual industrial capitalist must perfect his machinery more and
more, under penalty o f ruin .
B u t the perfecting of machinery is making h uman labour super
fluous. If the introduction and increase of machinery means the dis� placement
of
millions
of
manual
by
a
few
machine-workers,
improvement in machinery means the displacement of more and
more o f the machine-workers themselves. It means, in the last in
stance, the production o f a number o f available wage-workers in excess of the average needs of capital, the formation of a complete industrial reserve army, as I called it in 1 8 4 5 , available a t the times
when industry is working at high pressure, to be cast out upon the
street when the inevitable crash comes, a constant dead weight
upon the limbs of the working class in its struggle for existence with capital, a regulator for the keeping of wages down to the low level
that suits the int erests of capital. Thus it comes about, to quote
Marx, that machinery becomes the m ost powerful weapon in the war of capital against the working class; that the instruments
labour constantly tear the means of subsistence out of the hands
of of
the labourer; that the very product of the worker is turned in to al).
instrument for his subjugation. Thus it comes about that the eCOn� omising of the instruments of labour becomes at the same
time;
from the outset, the most reckless waste of labour power, and rob bery based upon the normal conditions under which labou r func
tions; that machinery, "the most powerful instrument for shorten
ing labour time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the labourer's time and that of his family at t he
disposal o f the capitalist for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital ." (Capital, English edition, 9 . See p . 406 . above. [R. T.J
p. 406 . ) 9 Thus it comes
70 8
The Later Engels
about that the overwork of some becomes the pre liminary condition for the idleness of oth ers, and that modern industry, which hunts after new consumers over the whole world, forces the consump tion o f the masses at home down to a starvation minimum, and i n doing thus destroys its own home market. "The law that a lways equili
brates the relative surplus population, or industrial reserve· arm y, t o
t h e extent and energy o f accum ulation, t h i s law rivets the la bourer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus
to t he rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation o f capita l . Accumulation of wealth a t one pole
is, t herefore, a t the same time, accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the oppo
site pole, i .e . on the side o f the class that produces
its own product in the form of capital. " (Capital, p. 6 6 1 . ) 1 And to expect any other division of the products from the capitalistic mode o f production is
the same as expecting the electrodes of a battery not to decompose acidulated water, not to l i berate oxygen at the positive, hydrogen .
at the negative pole, so long as they are connected with the battery. \Ve have seen that the ever-increasing perfectibility of modern
machinery is, by the anarchy o f social prod uction, turned into a
compulsory law that forces the individual industrial capitalist always t o improve his machinery, always to increase its productive force . The bare possibility of extending the field of production is trans formed for him into a similar compu lsory law. The enormous expansive force of modern ind ustry, compared with which that of gases is mere c h i l d ' s play, appears to us now as a
necessity for
expansion, both qualitative and q uantitative, that laughs at all resistance. Such resistance is offered by consu mption, by sales, by
the markets for the products of modern industry. B ut the capacity
for extension, extensive and intensive, of the markets i s primarily
governed by quite different laws that work much l ess energetically. The extension of the markets cannot keep pace with the extension
of production . The collision becomes inevitable, and as this cannot produce any real solution s o long a s i t does not break in pieces the
capitalist mode of production, the collisions become periodic. Capi
talist production has begotten another "vicious circl e . " As a matter of fact, since 1 8 2 5 , when t h e fi r s t general crisis broke out, the whole ind ustrial and commercial world, production and exchange among all civilised peoples and their more or less barbaric
hangers-on, are thrown out of j oi n t about once every ten years . Commerce is at a standsti ll, the markets are glutted, products accu mulate, a s m u l titudinous as they are unsaleable, hard cash d isap pears, credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence, because they h ave pro1 . See
p. 43 1 , above. [R. T.]
709
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
duced too much of the means of subsistence; bankruptcy follows upon bankruptcy, execution upon executio n . The stagnation lasts
for years; productive forces and products are wasted and destroyed
wholesale, until the accumulated mass of commodities finally filters
off, m ore or less depreciated in value, until production and ex
change gradually begin to move aga i n . Little by little the pace quicken s . I t becomes a tro t . The industrial trot breaks into a canter, the canter in turn grows into the headlong gallop of a< perfect stee
plechase of industry, commercial
credit,
and speculation which
finally, after breakneck leaps, ends where it began-in the ditch of a
cris i s . And so over and over agai n . \Ve have now, since the year
1 82 5 , gone through ( 1 877 ) we are going
this five times, and at the present m oment
t hrough i t for the sixth time . And the charac
ter of these crises is so cl early defined that Fourier hit all of them
off when he described the first as
a crisis from
"crise pzethorique,"
plethora .
In th ese crises, the contradiction between socialised production and capitalist appropriation ends in a violent explosion . The circul� tion o f commodities is, for the time being, stopp e d . Money, the
means of circulation, becomes a hindrance to circulation . All the laws o f production
and circulation of commodities
are
turned
upside down . The economic collision has reached its apogee.
The
mode of production is in rebellion against the mode of exchange. The fact that the socialised organisation o f production within the factory has developed so far that it has become incompatible with the anarchy o f production in society, which exists side b y side with
and dominates it, is bro ught home to the capitalists themselves by
the violent concentration of capital through the ruin of many large, and
a
that occurs
during crises,
still greater number of small,
capitalists. The whole mechanism of the capitalist mode of produc tion breaks down under the pressure of the productive forces, its
own creations . I t is no longer able to turn all this mass of means
of
prod uction into capital. They lie fallow, and for that very reason
the industrial reserve army must also lie fallo w . Means of produc�
of But
tion, means of subsistence, available labourers , all the elements
production and of general wealth, are present in abundance .
"abundance becomes the source of distress and want" ( Fourier ) ,
because i t is the very thing that prevents the transformation of the mea n s of production and subsistence into capital . For in capitalistic
society the means of production can only function w h en they have undergone a preliminary transformation into capital, into the means
of exploiting human labour power. The necessity of this transforma tion into capital of the means of production and subsistence stands like a ghost between these and the workers . It alone prevents the coming together of the material and personal levers of production;
710
The Later Engels
it alone forbids the means of production to function, the workers to work a n d live . On the one hand, therefore, the capitalistic m o de o f production stands convicted o f i t s own incapacity to further direct these productive forc e s . On the other, these productive forces them selves, with increasing energy, press forward to the removal of the existing contradiction to the abolition of their quality a s capital, to the pra c t i cal recognition of their character as social forces.
prod u cti ve
This rebellion of the productive forces, as they grow more and more powerful, against their quality as capital, this stronger and stronger command that their social character shall be recognised, forces the capitalist class itself to treat them more and more as social productive forces, so far as this is possible under capitalist condition s .
The
period
of
industrial
high
pressure,
with
its
unbounded inflation o f credit, not less than the crash itself, by the collapse o f great capitalist establishments, tends t o bring abo u t that form of the socialisation of great masses of means o f production which w e meet with i n the different kinds of joint-stock companies. Many of these means of production and o f distribution are, from the outset, so colossal that, like the railways, they exclude all other forms of capitalistic exploitation. At a further stage of evolution this form also becomes insufficient. The producers on a large scale in a particular branch of industry in a particular country unite in a trust, a union for the purpose of regulating production . They determine the total amount to be produced, parcel it out among themselves, and thus enforce the selling price fixed beforeh a n d . But trusts of t h is ki nd, a s soon as business becomes ba d, are generally liable to break up, and on this very account compel a yet greater concentra tion o f association. The whole of the particular industry is turned into one gigantic j o int-stock company; internal competition gives place to the internal monopoloy of this one company. This has hap pened in 1890 with the English alkali production, which is now, after the fusion o f 48 large works, in the hands of one company, conducted upon a single plan, and with
a
capital o f £6,000,000.
I n the trusts, freedom of competition changes into its very oppo site-into monopoly; and the production without any definite plan of capitalistic society capitulates to the p roduction upon a definite plan of the inv.ading socialistic society. Certainly this is so far still to the benefit and advantage of the capitalists. But in this case the exploitation is so palpable that it must break down . No nation will put u p with production conducted by trusts, with so barefaced an exploitation of the community by a small band o f dividend-mon gers . In any case, with trusts or wi thout, the official representativ e of capitalist society-the state-will ultimately have to undertake the
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
711
direction of production .2 This necessity for conversion into state property is felt first in the great institutions for intercourse a n d c o m munication-the post office, t h e telegraphs, t h e railway s . If t h e crises demonstrate t h e incapacity of t h e bourgeoisie for managing any longer modern p roductive forces, the transforma tion of the great establishments for production and distrubution into j oint-stock companies, trusts and state property shows how unneces sary the bourgeoisie are for that purpos e . All the social functions o f t h e capitalist are 'now performed b y salaried employees. T h e capital ist has n o further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another o f their capital. A t first the capitalistic mode of production forces out the workers. Now it forces out the capitalists, a n d reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus population, although not imme diately into those of the industrial reserve army. B u t the transformation, either into joint-stock companies and trusts, o r into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalis tic nature of the prod uctive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts this is obvious. And the modern state, agai n, is only the organisation that bourgeois society takes on in order to support t h e external conditions of the capital is t m ode o f production against the encroachments as well of the workers a s o f individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state o f the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does i t exploit. The workers remain wage-workers-proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with . It is rather brought to a head. B ut, brought to a h ead, it top2. I say "have to." For only when the means of production and distribution have actually outgrown the form o f management b y joint-stock companies, and when, therefore, the taking them over by the state has become economi c all y inevitable, only then-even if it is the state o f today that effects this-is there an economic advance, the attainment of another step preliminary to the taking over of all productive forces by society itself. But of late, since Bismarck went in for state own ership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of Il.unkeyism, that without more ado declares all state ownership, even of the Bismarckian sort, to be so cialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the state of the tobacco industry. is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metter nich must be numbered among the
founders of socialism. If the Belgian state, for Quite orllinary political and financial reasons, itself constructed its chief railway lines; if Bismarck, not under any economic compulsion, too.k. over for the state the chief Prussia,!l lines, simply to be the better. able to have them in hand in case of ,,!,ar,. to bring up the railway employees as vol ing cattle for the government, and especially to create for himself a ne'(\' source 0 f income independent of parlia mentary votes-this was, in no sense, a socialistic measure, directly or indi rectly, consciously or unconsciously: Otherwise, the Royal Maritime Com pany, the Royal porcelain manufacture, and even the regimental tailor shops of the Army would also be socialist.ic in stitutions, or even, as was seriously proposed by a sly dog in Frederick William III's reign, the taking over by the state of the brothels. [Engels]
712
The Later Engels
pIes over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solu tion of the conflict, but concealed within i t are the technical condi tions that form the elements o f that solution . This solution can only consist in the practical recognition of the social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the harmonising of the modes of production, appropriation, and exchange w i t h the socialised character of the means of production. And this can only corne about by society openly and directly taking p ossession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control except that o f society a s a whole. The social character of the means o f production and of the products today reacts against the produc ers, periodically distrupts all production and exchange, acts only like a law of Nature working blindly, forcibly, destructively. B ut with the taking over by society of th e productive forces, the social character of the means of production and of the products will be utilised by t h e producers with a perfect understanding o f its nature, and instead of being a source of disturbance and periodical collapse, will become the most powerful lever o f production itself . Active social forces work exactly like natural forces: blindly, forci bly, de�tructively, so long as we do not understand, and reckon with, them. But when once we understand them, when once we grasp their action , their direction, their effects, i t depends only upon ourselves to subject them more and more to our own will, and by means of them to reach our own ends. And this holds quite espe cially of the mighty productive forces of today. As long as we obsti nately refuse to understand the nature and the character of these social means of action-and this understanding goes against the grain of the capitalist mode of production and its defenders-so long these forces are at work in spite of us, in opposition to us, so long they master us, as we have shown above in deta i l . B u t when once their n a t u r e i s understood, they can, i n t h e hands o f the producers working together, b e transformed from master demons into willing servants. The difference i s a s that between the destructive force of electricity in the lightning of the storm, and electricity under command in the telegraph and the voltaic arc; the difference between a conflagration, and fire working in the service of m a n. \Vith this recognition, at last, o f the real nature of the pro ductive forces of today, the social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of prod uction upon a definite plan, according to the needs of the community and of each individual. Then the capitalist mode of appropriation, i n which the product enslaves first the producer and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production; upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension o f pro-
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
713
duction-on the other, direct individual appropriation, a s means of subsistence and of enjoyment. \Vhilst the capitalist mode of production more and more com pletely transforms the great majority of the population into prole tarians,
i t creates the power which,
under penalty of its own
destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution . \Vhilst i t forces on m o re and m ore the transformation of the vast means of produc tion, already socialised, into state prop erty, it shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power
and turns the means of production into state pro perty. B u t, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, abolishes also the state as state. Society thus far, b ased upon class antagonisms, had need of the state . That is, of an organisation of the particular class which was pro tempore the exploiting class, an organisation for the pur pose of preventing any in terference from without with the existing conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the pu rpose of forcibly keeping the exploited classes in the condition of oppres sion corresponding with the given mode of production (slavery, serf dom, wage-labo u r) . The state was the official representative of society as a whole; t h e gathering of it together into a visible embod iment. But it was this only in so far as it was the state of that class which itself represented, for the time being, society as a whole: in ancient times, the state of slaveowning citizens; in the Middle Ages, the feudal l o rds; in our own time, the bourgeoisie. \Vhen at last it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual strug gle for existence based upon our present a narchy in production, with the collisions a n d excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a state, i s no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the state really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society-this is, at the same time, its last independent act a s a state. State interference in social relations becomes, i n one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by t h e con duct of processes of p roduction. The state is not "abolished." It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase "a free state," both as to its j ustifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the demands of the so called anarchists for the abolition of the state out of hand. Since the historical appearance o f the capitalist mode of produc tion, the appropriation by society of all the means of production has often been dreamed of, more or l ess vaguely, by individuals, as well
714
The Later Engels
as by sects, as the ideal of the future. But it could become possible, could become a historical necessity, only when the actual conditions for its realisation were there. Like every other social advance, it becomes practicable, not by men understanding that the existence of classes is in contradiction to justice, equality, etc., not by the mere willingness to abolish these classes, but by virtue of certain new economic conditions. The separation of society into an exploit ing and an exploited class, a ruling and an oppressed class, was the necessary consequence of the deficient and restricted development of production in former times. So long as the total social labour only yields a product which but slightly exceeds that barely neces sary for the existence of all; so long, therefore, as labour engages all or almost all the time of the great majority of the members of socie ty-so long, of necessity, this society is divided into classes. Side by side with the great majority, exclusively bond slaves to labour, arises a class freed from directly productive labour, which looks after the general affairs of society: the direction of labour, state business, law, science, art, etc. It is, therefore, the law of division of labour that lies at the basis of the division into classes. But this does not pre vent this division into classes from being carried out by means of violence and robbery, trickery and fraud. It does not prevent the ruling class, once having the upper hand, from consolidating its power at the expense of the working class, from turning its social leadership into an intensified exploitation of the masses. But if, upon this showing, division into classes has a certain his torical justification, it has this only for a given period, only under given social conditions. It was based upon the insufficiency of pro duction. It will be swept away by the complete development of modern productive forces. And, in fact, the abolition of classes in society presupposes a degree of historical evolution at which the existence, not simply of this or that particular ruling class, but of any ruling class at all, and, therefore, the existence of class distinc tion itself has become an obsolete anachronism. It presupposes, therefore, the development of production carried out to a degree at which appropriation of the means of production and of the prod ucts, and, with this, of political domination, of the monopoly of culture, and of intellectual leadership by a particular class of society, has become not only superfluous but economically, politically, intel lectually, a hindrance to development. This point is now reached. Their political and intellectual bank ruptcy is scarcely any longer a secret to the· bourgeoisie themselves. Their economic bankruptcy recurs regularly every ten years. In every crisis, society is suffocated beneath the weight of its own produc tive forces and products, which it cannot use, and stands helpless, face to face with the absurd contradiction that the producers have
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
715
nothing t o consume, because consumers are wanting. The expansive force of the means of production bursts the bonds that the capital ist mode of production had imposed upon them . Their deliverance from these bonds is the one precondition for an unbroken, con stantly accelerated development of the productive forces, and there· with for a practically unlimited increase of production itself. Nor is this all . The socialised appropriation of the means of production do e s away, not only with the present artificial restrictions upon pro duction, but also with the positive waste and devastation of produc tive forces and products that are a t the present time the inevitable concomitants of production, and that reach their height i n the crises . Further, it sets free for the community a t large a mass of means of production and of products, by doing away with the sense less extravagance of the ruling classes af today and their political representatives . The possibility of securing for every member of s ociety, by means of socialised production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day by day more full, b ut an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise . of their physical and mental faculties-this possibility is now for the first time here, but it is here.3 With t h e seizing of t h e m e a n s of production by society, produc tion of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the p roducer. Anarchy in social produc tion is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears . Then for the first time man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal king dom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human one s . The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of Nature, because he has now become master of his own social organisation. The laws of his own socia l action, hitherto standing face to face with man a s laws of
Nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used withJull understanding, and so mastered by h i m . Man's own social organisa tion, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Natu re. and history, now becomes the result of his own free action . The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control af man himself. Only from that time will man
3. A few figures may serve to give .an approximate idea of the enormous ex pansive force of the modern means of production, even under capitalist pres sure. According to Mr. Giffen, the total wealth of Great Britain and Ireland amounted, in round numbers in 1814 to £2,200,000,000. 1865 to £6,100,000,000.
1875 to £8,500,000,000. As an instance of the squandering of means of production and of products during a crisis, the total loss in the German iron industry alone, in the cri sis 1873-78, was given at the second German Industrial Congress (Berlin, February 21, 1878) as £22,750,000. [Engels]
716
The Later Engels
himself, more and more consciously, make his own h istory-only from that time will the socia l causes set in movement by him have, i n the main and i n a constantly growing measu re, the results intended by him. It i s the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom . Let us briefly sum up our sketch of historical evolution. 1. Mediaeval Society. Individual p roduction on a small scal e. Means of production adapted for individual u s e; hence primitive, ungain ly, petty, dwa rfed in acti o n . Production for immediate con sumption, either of the producer himself or of his feudal lord . Only where a n excess of production over this consumption occurs is such excess offered for sale, enters into exchange. Production of commod ities, therefore, only in its infancy. B ut already it contains within itself, in embryo, anarchy in the production of society at large. II. Capitalist Revolution. Transformation of industry, at first by
means of simple co-operation and manufacture. Concentration of the means of production , hitherto scattered, into great workshops. A s a consequence, their transformation from indi vidual to social means of production-a transformation which does not, on the whole, affect the form of exchange. The o l d forms of appropria tion remain in force. The capitalist a ppears. In his capacity a s owner of the means of production, he also appropriates the prod ucts and turns them into commodities. Production has become a social act. Exchange and appropriation continue to be individual acts, the a cts of individuals. The social product is appropriated by the individual capitalist. Fundamental contradiction, whence a rise all the contra dictions in which our present-day society moves, a nd which modern industry brings to ligh t. A. Severan ce of the producer from the means of production. Condemnation of the worker to wage-labour for life . Antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. B. Crowing predominance and increasing effectiveness of the laws governing the p roduction of commoditie s . Un bridled competi tion. Contradiction between socialised organisation in the individ ual factory and social anarchy in production as a whole. C . On the one hand, perfecting of machinery, made by compe tition compulsory for each individual manufacturer, and comple mented by a constantly growing displacement of laboure rs.' Industrial reserve army. On the other hand, unlimited extension of production, also compulsory u n der competition, for every manufac turer. On both sides, unheard-of development of productive forces, excess of supply over demand, over-production, glutting of the mar kets, crises every ten years, the vicious circle: excess here, of means o f production and products-excess there, of labourers, without employment and without means of e xistence. B u t these two levers
Socialism: Utopian a nd Scientific
717
of production and of social well-b eing are unable to work together, because the capitalist form of production prevents th e productive forces 'from workin g and the products from circulating, unless they are first turned into capital-which their very superabundance pre vents. The contradiction has grown into a n absurdity. The mode of production rises in rebellion against the form of exchange. The bourgeoisie are convicted of incapacity further to manage their own social productive forces. D. Partial recognition of the socia l character of the productive forces forced upon the capitalists themselves . Taking over of the great institutions for production and communica tion, first by joint stock companies, later on by trusts, then by the state. The bour· geoisie demonstrated to be a superfluous class. All its social func tions are now performed by salaried employees.
III. Proletarian Revolution. Solution of the contradic tions. The proletariat seizes the public power, and by means of this transforms the socialised means of production, slipping from the hands o f the bourgeoisie, into public property. By this act, the proletariat frees the means of production from the character of capital they have th us far borne, and gives their socialised character complete free dom t o work itself out. Socia l ised production upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible. The development of production makes the existence of different classes of society thenceforth an anachronism. I n proportion as anarchy in social production v a n ishes, the political authority of the state dies out. Man, at l ast the master o f his own 'form of social organisation, becomes a t the same time the lord over Nature, his own master-free. To accomplish this a c t of universal emancipation i s the historical mission o f the m odern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the new oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge o f the con ditions and o f the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression o f the proletarian movement, scientific socialism.
On the Division of Labour in Production FRIEDRICH ENGELS
t the of 1878, Anti-Diihring, shows th� This selection from Engels' work theme In he l centra a was r labou of n divisio dehumanizing nature of the . sm g their early phllosoP l1cal comm�nI . thought of Marx and Engels, linkin Ulty. O�tIn of lIne ken unbro an in gs � with Capital and other later writin th�o unlike that of some ?ther socialIst The socialism of Marx and Engels, tlOn roduc on u asIs emph d principal � . � rists of their time and after, place dua a� a 1l1dlVl the with was rn conce l . rather than distribution. Its centra n productive activity. It saw the dlvlsl� roducer and the conditions of his ns aracte c been a that ion situat f labour in production as an enslaving production-capltal:sm p�rtIcularly,--: tic of all hitherto existing modes of diVI mode of pro UctlOn I� which the and looked to future socialism as a hed. abolIs le, possib ically techn sion of labour would be, so far as
�
!
�
��
�
�
?
* * * Distribution, in so far as it is governed by p u rel y economic considerations, is regulated by the interests of prod uction, and pro duction is most encouraged by a mode of distribution which allows all members of society to develop, maintain and exert thei r capaci ties in all poss ible directions. It is true that, to the mode. of th ought of the educated classes which Herr Diihring has inherited, it must seem monstrous that in time to come there will no longer be any professional porters o r architects, and tha t the man who for half an h o u r gives instructions as an architect will also p ush a barrow for
a
period, until his activity as an architect is once again required. It is a fine sort of socialism which perpetua tes t h e professional porter! * * * In every society in which production h as developed spon taneously-and our present society is of this type-the situation is not tha t the producers control the m e ans of production, but tha t t h e m e ans of production control the producers. In s uch a society each new lever of production is necessa rily transformed into a new means for the s ubjection of the producers to the means of produc tion. This is most of all true of that lever of production which, prior to the introduction of modem industry, was by far the most 718
On the Division of Labour in Production
719
powerful-the division of labour.The first great division of labour, the separation of town and country, condemned the rural population to thousands of years of mental torpidity, and the people of the towns each to su bjection to his own individual trade. It destroyed the basis of the intellectual development of the -former and the physical development of the latter. When the peasant approp riates his l and, and the townsman his trade, his land appropriates the peasant and his trade the townsman to the very same extent. In the division of labour, man is also divided. All other physical and mental faculties are sacrificed to the development of one single activity. This stunting of man grows in the same measure as the division of labour, which attains i t s highest development i n m anufacture.�Ian ufacture splits up each trade into its separate partial operations, allots each of these to a n individual labourer as his life calling, and thus chains him for life to a particular detail -function and a particu lar tool. "It converts the labourer into a crippled m onst rosity, by forcing his detail dexterity at the expense of a world of productive capabilities and instincts . .. . The individual himself is made the automatic motor of a fractional operation"
(Marx)l-a motor
which i n many cases is perfected only by literally crippling the labourer physically and mentally. The machinery of modern ind us try degrades the labourer from a machine to the mere appendage of a mach ine. "The life-long speciality of handling one and the same tool, now becomes the lifelong speciality of serving one and the s a m e machine . Machinery i s put to a wrong use, with the object of transforming the workman, f r o m ,his very childhood, into a p a r t of ' a detail-machine" (IVlarx).2 And not only t h e labourers, b u t also the classes directly or indirectly exploiting the labourers are made subject, through the div ison of labour, to the tool of their func tion: the empty-minded bourgeois t o his own capital and h is own insane craving for profits; the lawyer to his fossilized legal concep t i ons, which dominate him as an independent power; the "edu cated classes" in general to their manifold species of local narrow-m indedness and one-sidedn ess, to their own physical and mental short-sightedness,
to their stunted growth due to their narrow specialized education and their b eing chained for life to this specialized activity-even when this specialized activity is merely to. do nothing.
The utopians were already perfectly clear in their minds a s to the effects of the div ision of labour, the stunting on the one hand of t h e labourer, and on t h e other of the labour function, which i s re stricted to the lifelong , uniform, mechanical repetition of one and the same operation . The abolition of the antithesis between town a n d country was demanded by F ourier, as by Owen, as the first 1. See Capital,
p.
398, above, [R. T.]
2. See Capital, p. 408, above, [R. T.]
720
The Later Engels
prerequisite for the abolition of the old division of labour alto gether. Both of them thought that th e popula tion should be scat tered through the country in groups of sixteen hundred to three thousand p ersons; each group was to occupy a gigantic palace, with a household run on communal lines, in the centre of their area of land . It is true t h a t Fourier occasionally refers to towns, but these were t o consist in turn of only four or five such palaces situated near each other. Both writers would have each member of society occupied in agriculture as well as i n industry; with Fourier, ind ustry covers chiefly handicrafts and manufacture, while Owen assigns the main role to modern industry and already demands the introduc tion of steam-power and machinery in domestic work . But within agriculture as well as industry both of them also demand the great est possible variety of occupation for each individual, and in accord ance with this, the training of the youth for the u tmost p ossible all-roun d technical functions . They both consider that man should gain universal development through universal practical activity and that labour should recover the attractiveness of which the division of labour has despoiled it, in the first place through this variation of occupation, and through the correspondingly short duration of the "sitting"-to use Fourier's expression-devoted to each particu lar kind of work . B oth Fourier and Owen are far in advance of the mode O'f thought of the exploiting cl asses inherited by Herr Diihring, according to which the antithesis be tween town and country is inevitable in'the nature of things; the narrow view that a number of "entities" must in any event be condemned to the pro duction of
one single
article, the view that desires to perpetuate the
"economic species" of men distinguished by the i r way of life people who take pleasure in the performance of precisely this and no other thing, who have therefore sunk so low that they re;oice in their own su bjection and one-sidednes s . In comparison with the basic conceptions even of the "idiot" Fourier's most recklessly bold fantasies; in comparison even with the paltriest ideas of the "crude, feeble, and paltry" Owen-Herr Diihring, himself still completely dominated by the division of labour, is no more than an imperti nent dwarf. In making i tself the master of all the means of production to use them in accordance with a social plan, society p u ts an end to the former subjection of men to their own means of production. It goes without saying that society cannot free itself unless every individual is freed. The old mode of production must therefore be revolution ized fro m top to bottom, and in particular the former division of labour must disappear. I ts pl ace must b e taken b y an organization of production in which, on the one hand, no individual can throw on the shoulders of others his share in productive labour, this natu-
On the Division of Labour in Production
721
ral condition of h uman existence; and in which, on the other hand, productive labour, instead of being a means o f subjugating m e n , will become a m e a n s of t h eir emancipation; by offering e a c h indi vidual the opportunity to develop all his faculties, physical and mental, in all directions and exercise them to the full-in which, therefore, productive labour will become a pleasure instead of being a
burden .
Today this is no l onger a fantasy, no longer a pious wish . With the present developm ent of the productive forces, the increase in production that will follow from the very fact of the socialization of the productive forces, coupled with the abolition of the barriers and disturbances, and o f the waste of products and means o f pro d uction, resulting from the capitalist mode of production, will s uffice, with everybody doing his share o f work, to reduce the time required for labour to a point which, measured by our present con ceptions, will be small indeed. Nor is the abolition of the old division o f labour a demand which could only b e carried through to the detriment of the p ro ductivity of labour. On the contrary. Thanks to modern industry it has become a condition of production itself. "The employment of m achinery does away with the necessity of crystallizing this distri bution after the manner o f Manufacture, by the constant annexa tion of a particular man to a particular function. Since the motion of the whole system does not proceed from the workman , but from the machinery, a change of persons can take place a t any time witho u t an interruption of the work . . . . Lastly, the quickness with which machine work is learnt by young people does away with the necessity o f bringing up for exclusive employment by machinery, a special class of operatives ."s B u t while the capitalist mode o f employment o f machinery necessarily perpetuates t h e o l d division of labour with its fossilized specialization, although it has become superfluous from a technical standpoint, the m a chinery itself rebels against this anachronism . The technical basis of modern industry is revolutionary. "By means of machinery, chemical processes and other methods, it is c ontinually causing changes not only in the technical basis of production, but also in the functions of th e labourer, and i n the s o cial combinations of the labour proce s s . At the same time, it thereby also revolutionizes the division of labour within the society, and incessantly launches masses of capital and o f workpeople from one branch of production to another. Modern industry, by its v ery nature, therefore necessitates variation of labour, fluency of function, universal mobility of the labourer . . . . We have seen how this absolute contradiction ... vents its rage . . . 3. See
Capital,
p.
408, above. [R. T.1
722
The Later Engels
in the incessant human sacrifices from among the working class, in the most reckless squandering of labour-power, and in the devasta tion ca used by social anarchy. This is the negative side . But, if, on the one hand, variation o f work at present imposes itself after the manner of an overpowering natural law, and with the blindly
destructive action of a natural law that meets with resistance at all points, modern industry, on the other hand, through its catas trophes iQPoses the necessity of recognizing, as a fundamen tal law o f production, variation o f work, consequently fitness of the labourer for varied work, consequently the greatest possible devel opment of his varied aptitudes. It becomes a qu estion of l i fe and death for society to a d a pt t h e mode of production to the normal functioning of this law. Modern ind ustry, ind eed, compels soc iety, under penalty of death, to replace the detail-worker of today, crip pled by lifelong repetition of one and the same trivial operation, and thus reduced to t h e mere fragment of a man, by the fully developed individual, fit for a variety o f labours, ready to face any change o f production, and t o whom the different social functions he performs, are but so many modes of giving free scope to his own natural and acquired powers" (Marx, Capital).4 Modern industry, which has taught us to convert the movement of molecules, something more or .less universally feasible, into the movement of masses for technical purposes, ha s thereby to a con siderable extent freed production from restrictions of locality .
\Vater-power was lo cal; steam-power is free . \Vhile water-power is necessarily rural, steam-power is by no means necessarily u rba n . I t i s capitalist utilization which concentrates i t mainly i n the towns and changes factory villages into factory towns . Bu t in so doing it at the same time undermines the conditions under which it oper ates . The first requirement of the steam-engine , and a m ain require ment of almost all branches of production in modern industry, is relatively pure water. But t h e factory town transforms all water into stinking manure. However much therefor e urban concentration is a basic condition of capitalist production, each individual indu strial capitalist is constantly striving to get away from the large towns
necessarily created by this concentration , and to transfer his plant to the countryside. This process can be studied in detail in the tex tile industry districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire; modern capital ist industry is constantly bringing new large towns into being there by constant flight from the towns into the country. The situation is
similar in the metal-workin g districts where, in part, other causes p roduce the same effects . Once more, only the abolition of the capitalist character of 4. See
pp. 413-414,
above. [R. T.]
On the Division of Labour in Production
723
modern industry can bring us o u t of this new vicious circle, can resolve this contradiction i n modern industry, which is const antly reproducing itself. Only a society which makes it possible for its productive forces to dovetail harmoniously into each other on the basis of one single vast plan can allow industry to be distributed over the whole country in the way best adapted to its own develop ment, and to t h e maintenance and development of the other ele ments of production. Accordingly, abolition of the antithesis between town and coun try is not merely possible. It has become a direct necessity of indus trial production itself, just as it has become a necessity of agricul tural production and, besides, of public health. The present poison ing of the air, water and land can be put an end to only by the fusion of town and country; and only such fusion will change the situation of the masses n ow languishing i n the towns, and enable their excrement to be used for the production of plants instead of for the production of disease. Capitalis t industry has already made itself relatively independent of the local limitations arising from the location of sources af the raw materials it needs . The textile industry works up, in the main, imported raw material s . Spanish iron ore is worked up in England and Germany and Spanish and South-American copper ores, in England. Every coal-field now supplies fuel to an indus trial area beyond its own borders, an area which is wi�ening every yea r . Along t h e whole o f t h e European coast steam-engines are driven b y English a n d t o some extent a l s o bv German and Belgian coal. Society liberated from the barriers of capitalist production can go m uch further still. By generating a race of producers with an all round training who understand the scientific basis of industrial produ c tion as a whole, and each of whom has had practical experi ence in a whole series of branches of production from start to finish, thi s society will bring into being a new productive force which will abundantly compensate - f or the labour required to trans port raw materials and fuel from great distances. The abolition of the separation of town a n d country is therefore not utopian, also, in so far as it is conditioned on the most equal distribution possible of modern industry over the whole country. It is true that in the huge towns civilization h a s bequeathed us a her itage which it will take much time and trouble t o get rid of. But it m ust and will be got rid of, h owever protracted a process i t may b e. \Vhatever destiny m a y be in store for the German Empire of the Prussian nation, Bismarck can g o to his grave proudly aware that the desire of his heart is sure to be fulfilled: the great towns will perish . And
now see how puerile Herr Diihring's notions are-that
724
The Later E ngels
society can take posses sion of all means of production in the aggre gate without revolutionizing -from top to bottom the old method of production and first of all putting an end to the old division of labour; that everything will be in order once "natural aptitudes and personal capabilities are taken into accoun t"-th a t therefore whole m asses of entities will remain, as in the past, subjected to the pro duction of one single article; whole "populations" will be engaged in a single branch of production, and hu manity continue divided, as " in the past, into a number of different crippled "economic species, for there still are "porters" and "architects . " Society is to become master of the means o f production as a whole, in order that each individual may remain the slave o f his means of production, and have only a choice as to
which
means of production are to enslave
h i m . And see also how Herr Diihring considers the separation of town and country as " in evitable i n the nature of things," and can find only a tiny pal liative in schnaps-distilling and beet-sugar manu facturing-two, in their connection specifically Prussian, branches
of industry; how he makes the distribution of industry over the country dependent on certain future inventions and o n the neces· sity of associating industry directly with the procurement of raw materials-raw materials which are already used a t an ever increas ing distance from their place of origin! And Herr Diihring finally tries to cover his retreat by assuring us that in the long run social wants will carry through the union between agriculture and indus try even
against
economic considerations, as if this would be some
economic sacrifice! Certa inly, to be able to see that the revolutionary elements, which will d o away with the old division o f labour, a long with the separation of town and country, and will revolutionize the whole of production; see that these elements are a lready contained i n embryo in the productive conditions of modern large-scale industry and t hat their development is hindered by the existing capitalist mode of prod uction-to be a b l e to see these th ings, it is necessary to have a somewhat wider horizon than the sphere of jurisdiction of the Pruss ian Landrecht, than the country where prod uction of schnaps and beet-sugar are the key industries, and where commer cial crises can be studied on the book market. To be able to see these things it is necessary to have some knowledge of real large scale industry in its historical growth and in its present actual form, especially in the one country where i t has its h ome and where a lone it has a ttained its classical development. Then no one will think of attempting t o vulgarize modern scientific socia lism and to degrade it into H err Diihring's
specifically Prussian socialism.
On Morality FRIEDRICH ENGELS
Value iudgments resting on moral convictions abound in Marx and Engels. Thus they not only analyze exploitation and the division of labour in so ciety, but morally condemn these phenomena as evil. Yet, there is almost no
abstract discussion of ethics in their voluminous writings. An exception
is this passage from Anti-Diihring, frequently cited as an authoritative state ment of the view of Marx and Engels on the nature of morality. The mode of reasoning seems more distinctively characteristic of Engels' mind, how ever, than of Marx's.
* * * If, then, w e have not made much progress with truth and error, we can make even less with good and evil . This opposition
manifests itself exclusively in the domain of morals, that is, a domain belonging to the h istory of mankind, and it is precisely i n this field that final a n d ultimate truths a r e most sparsely sown. T h e conceptions o f g o o d and evil h a v e varied so much f r o m nation to nation and from age to age that they have often been in direct con trad iction to each other . B u t all the same, someone may object, good is not evil and evil is not good; if good is confused with evil there is an end to all moral ity, and everyone can do as he pleases . This is also, stripped of all oracular phrases, Herr Diihring's opinion . But the matter cannot be so simply disposed of. If it were such an easy business there would certainly be no dispute at all over good and evil; everyone would know what was good and what was bad. B ut how do things stand today? What morality is preached to us today? There is first Chris tian-feudal mora lity, inherited from earlier religious times; and this is divided, essentially, into a Catholic and a Protestant morality, each of which has no lack of subdivisions, from the Jesuit-Catholic and Orthodox-Protestant to loose "enlightened" moralities. Along side these we find the modern-bourgeois morali ty and beside it also the proletarian morality of the future, so that in the most advanced European countries a lone the past, present and future provide three 725
726
The Later Engels
great groups of moral theories which are in force s i multaneou sly a n d alongside e a c h other. \Vhich, t h en, i s the t r u e one? N o t o n e o f them, i n t h e sense of absolute finality; but certainly t h a t morality contains the maximum elements promising permanence which, in the presen t , represents the overthrow of the present, represents the future, and that is proletarian morality .
B ut when we see that the three classes of modern society, the feudal aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the proleta r iat, each have a morality of their own, we can only draw the one conclusion: that men, consciously or unconsciously, d erive their ethical ideas in the last resort from the practical relations on which their class position is based-from the economic relations in which they carry on pro duction and exchange . Bu t nevertheless there is quite a lot which the three moral theo ries mentioned above have in common-is this not at least a por tion of a mo rality which is fixed once and for all? These moral theo ries represent three different stages of the same historical develop ment, have therefore a common historical background, and for that reason alone they necessarily have much in commo n . Even m ore . A t similar or approximately similar stages of economic development moral theories must of necessity b e more or less in agreement . From the moment when private ownership of movable property devel oped, all societies in which this pr ivate ownership existed had to have this moral injunction in com mon: T hou shalt not steal . Does this inj unction thereby become an eternal moral i n junction? By no means. In a society i n which all motives for stealing have been done away with, in which therefore a t the very most only lunatics would ever steal, how the preacher of morals would be laughed at who tried solemnly to proclaim the eternal truth: Th ou shalt not steal! \Ve therefore reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatsoev er as an eternal, ultimate and forever immutable ethical law on the pretext that the moral world, too, has its perma nent principles which stand above histo r y ·and the differences between nations .. \Ve maintain on the contrary that all moral theo ries have been hitherto the product, in the last analysis, of the eco nomic conditions of society obtaining at the time. And as society has h i therto moved in class antagonisms, morality has al ways been class morality; it h a s either j u s tified the domination and the inter ests of the ruling class, or, ever since the oppressed class became
powerful enough, it has represented its i n dignation against this domination and the future interests of the oppressed . That in this process there has o n the whole been progress in morality, as i n all other branches of human knowledge, no one will doubt. But we have not yet passed beyond class m q rality A really human morality .
On Morality
727
which stands above class antagonisms and above any recollection of them becomes possible only at a stage of society which has not only overcome class antagonisms but has even forgotten them in practi cal life. And now one can gauge Herr Diihring's presumption in advancing his claim , from the midst of the old class society and on the eve of a social revolution, to impose on the future classless society an eternal morality independent of time and changes in real ity. Even assuming-what we do not know up to now-that he . understands the structure of the society of the future at least in its main outlines. * * *
Versus the Anarchists FRI EDRICH ENGELS
T h e issue be tween Marxism a n d Anarchism h a s often
been defined in
terms of two opposing beliefs as to the grand strategy of socialist revolu tion-with Marxists taking the position that state power must be seized and employed for the transformatio n of society and Anar chists
( such
as
Bakunin ) holding that state power must be destroyed in the very process of the revolution . Underlying that important disagreem ent, a s Engels m ade plain in this le tter of
J anuary
2 4, 1 8 7 2 , to Theodor Cuno, is a still more
fundamental theoretical di vergence that turns on d iffering definitions of what is to be regarded a s the " main evil " in society-capital or state power .
B akunin, who up to 1 8 68 had intrigued against the International , j o i n e d it after he h a d suffered a fiasco at the Berne Peace Congress1 and a t once began to conspire within it against the General Coun cil. B a k unin has a peculiar theory of his own, a med l ey of Proud honism and communism, the chief point of which is , in the first pl ace, that he does not regard capital-and th erefore the class antagonism between capital ists and wage-workers which has arisen through social development-but the state as the m a in evil to be abolished . \Vhile the great mass of the Social-Democratic workers h old our view that the state power is nothing m ore than the organ isation with which the ruling classes-landlords and ca pitalists have p rovided themselves in order to protect their social privileges , B akunin m aintains that it i s the state which h a s created capital, t h a t the capitalist has his capital only by the grace of the state. As, therefore, the state is the chief evil, i t is abov e all th e state wh ich must be done away with and then capital ism w ill go to blaze s
of itself. \Ve, on the contrary, say : D o away with capital , the concentration of all means of production in the hands o f the few, and the state will fall of itself. The difference is an essential one : \Vithout a previous social revolution the abolition of the state is 1 . The reference is to t h e Berne Congress of the bourgeois League of Peace
and Freedom, in which Bakunin took a leading part until October 1 8 6 8 .
72 8
Versus the Anarchists
729
n onsense; the abolition of capital is precisely the social revolution and involves a chang e in the whole mode of production . Now then, inasmuch as to B akunin the state is the main evil, nothing m u s t be done which can maintain the existence o f the state, that is, o f any
state, whether it be a republic, a monarchy or anything else . Henc � complete abstention from all politics. To commit a political act, and especially to take part in an election, would be a betrayal of principle . The thing to do i s to carry on p ropag anda, heap abuse upon the state; organise, and when ALL the workers are won over,
tha t is, the majority, depose all the authorities, abolish the state and replace it by the organisation o f the International. This great act, with which the m illennium begins, is called social liquidation. All this sounds extremely radical, and is so simple th at i t can be learnt by heart in five m i nutes; that i s why this theory o f Bakunin ' s has speedily f o u n d favour in Italy and S p a i n a m o n g young lawyers, doctors and other doctrinaires. B u t the mass of the workers will never allow itself to be persuaded tha t the public affairs of th eir countries are not also their own affairs, they are by nature political and whoever tries to make out to them that they should leave poli tics alone will in the end be left alone. To preach to the workers th at they shoul d in all circumstances abstain from politics is to drive them into the arms of the priests or th e bourgeois republica n s . Now, as the International, according to Bakunin, w a s not formed for political struggle but in order that it may at once replace the old state organisation as s oon as social liquidation takes place , i t follows that i t must com e as near as possible to th e B akuninist ideal o f the society of the future . In this society there will above all be no authority, for authority=state=an absolute evil . ( Indeed, hoi' these people p ropose to r u n a factory, operate a railway or steer a ship without having in the last resort one deciding will, without single management, they of course do not tell us. ) Th e authority of the majority over the minority also ceases . Every individual and every community is autonomous; but a s to how a society, even of only two people, i s possible unless each gi" es u p some of his auton omy, Bakunin again maintains silence. * * *
On Authority FRIEDRICH ENGELS
I n this article written i n October, 1 8 T Z , an d originally pub lished in Ital ian
in the
collectio n
Almanacco Repubblicano for 1 8 74, Engels continued the
debate aga inst the Anarchists Of special note is his argument that revolu .
tion itself is "certainly the most authoritarian thing there is," and h i s fur ther contention, which seems inconsistent with some of what w e know of the thinking of Marx, that machine ind ustry is inherently "despotic" in re lation to the workers.
A num ber of Socia lists have latterly la unched a r.egular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is
authoritarian
for it to be condemned .
This summary mode of procedure is being a bused to such an extent tha t it has become necessary to look into th e matter somewhat more closely. Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means : the imposition of the wi i l of another upon ours; on the other hand, a u thority presupposes su bordination . Now, since these two words so u n d bad and the relationship which they repre sent is disagn � eab i e to the subordinated party, the q u estion is to ascertain whether there is a n y way of dispen sing with it, whether given the conditions of present-day society-we could not create another social systerri, in 'which this aut hority woul d be given no scope any longer and would conseq uently have to disappear. On
ex
amining the economic, industria l and agricultural conditions which form the basis af present-day bourgeois s ociety, we find that they tend more and more to replace isolated action by combined actio n of individua l s. Modern industry with its big factories and mil ls, where h undreds of workers supervise complicated mach ines driven by steam, h a s superseded the small workshops of the separate pro ducers; the carriages and wagons of the highways have been substi tuted by railway trains, just as the small schooners and sailing feluc cas have been by steam -boats. Even agricu lture falls increasingly under the dominion o f the machine and o f steam, which slowly but 73 0
On Authority
73 1
relentlessly put in the place of the small proprietors big capitalists, who wit h the aid of hired workers cultivate vas t stretches o f lan d . Everywhere combined action, the complication o f processes depend ent upon each other, displaces independent action by individuals. B ut wh oever mentions combined action speaks of organisation; now, i s it possible to have organisation without authority? S upposing a social revolution dethroned the capitalists, who now exercise their authority over the production and circu lation of wealth. Supposing, to adopt entirely the point of view of the anti authoritarians, that the land and the instruments of labour had become the collective property o f the workers who use them . \Vill authority have disappeared or win it only have changed its form? Let us see. Let us take by way o f example a cotton spinning mill . The cotton must p ass through a t least six successive operations before it is reduced to the state o f thread, and these operations take place for the most part i n different rooms. Furthermore, keeping the machines going requires an engineer to look after the steam engine, mechanics to make the current repairs, and many other labourers whose business it is to transfer the products from one room to another, and s o forth. All these workers, men, women and children, are obliged to begin and finish their work at the hours fixed by the authority O'f the steam, which cares nothing for individual auton omy. The workers m u st, therefore, first come to an understanding on the hours of work; and these hours, once they are fixed, must be observed by all, without any exception . Thereafter particular ques tions arise in each room and at every moment concerning the mode of production, distribution of materials, etc ., which must be settled at once on pain of seeing an production immediately stopped; whether they are settled by. decision of a delegate placed a t the head o f each branch of labou r or, i f possible, by a m a j ority vote, the will of the single individual will always have to subordinate itself, which means that questions are settled in an authoritarian way. The auto matic machinery of a big factory is much more despotic than the small capitalists who employ workers ever have been. At least with regard to the hours of work one may write upon the portals O'f these factories : Lasciate ogn i autonomia, voi che entrate ! l If man, b y d i n t of h i s knowledge a n d inventive genius, h a s subdued t h e forces of nature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjecting h i m , in s o far as he employs t h e m , to a veritable despotism independent o f all social organisation . \Vanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry , itself, to d estroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning wheel . Let us take another example-the railway. Here too the co-opera1. "Leave, ye that enter in, all autonomy behind l "
732
The Later Engels
tion o f an infinite number o f ind ividuals is absolutely necessary, and th is co-operation must be practised during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may h ap pen. Here, too, the first condition of the j ob is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate o r a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions o f the ma jority o f persons interested. In either case there is very pronounced authority. l\ l ore over , what would ha ppen to the first train dispa tched if the authority of the railway employees over the Hon. passengers were abolished? But the necessity o f authority, and of imperious authority a t that, will nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. There, in time of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience o f all to the will of one . \iVhen I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti authoritarians the only answer they were able to give me was the following : Yes, that's true, but here it is not a case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of t hings they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole worl d . \iVe have thus seen that, on the one hand, a certain authority, no matter how delegated, and, on the other h and , a certain subordina tion, are things which, independently of all social organisation, are imposed upon us together with the material conditions under which w e produce and make products circulate. \V e have seen, besides, that the material cond itions of produc tion and circulation inevitably develop with large-scale ind ustry and large-scale agriculture, and increasingly tend to enlarge the scope of this authority. Hence it is absurd to spe ak o f the p rinciple of authority as being absolutely evil, and o f the principle of autonomy as being absolutely good. Authority and autonomy are relative things whose spheres vary with the various phases of the develop ment of society. If t h e autonomists c onfined themselves to saying that the social organisa tion of the future would restrict authority solely to the limits within which the conditions of production render it inevitable, we could und erstand each other; b u t they are blind to all facts that make the thing necessary and they passion ately fight the "Yard . \Vhy do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Social ists a re agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public func tions will lose their political character and be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests o f societ y . But the anti-authoritarians demand that the authoritar-
O n Authority
733
ian political s tate be abolished a t one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave b irth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. H av e these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolu tion i s certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; i t i s the act whereby one part o f the population imposes its will upon the other part b y means o f rifles , bayonets and cannon-authoritarian means, if s u ch there be a t all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it m u st maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries. \Vould the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we n ot, on the contrary, reproach i t for n o t having used it freely enough? Therefore, either one of two things :
either the anti-author
itarians don't know what they are talking about, in which case they are creating nothin g but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are b etraying the movement o f the proletariat. I n either c a se they serve the reaction .
The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State FRIEDRICH ENGELS
In Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery Through Barbarism to Civilization
( 1877 ) ,
the American a n thro
pologist Lewis H. Morga n propounded a matrilineal theory of the origins of h u m a n society. H i s account o f a stateless primitive society founded on com m u n a l property appeared to Marx and Engels to h ave
( as
Engels later
put i t ) the same significance for the history of primitive society as Dar
win's theory of evolution had for bi ology and Marx's theory of su rpl us value had for political economy . Marx planned to write a study based on M o rga n ' s researches, and made extensive e x tracts from a n d notes on An· cient Society for this purpose . * U sing Marx's material s a s well as the origi n al sources, a n d occasionally even interpolating Marx's marginalia, Enge l s in
1 884
wrote his monograph on The Origin of the Famity, Private Property,
and the State, fro m which this selection is taken . The two subtitles have been added by the editor of this reader.
The Family: Its Past, Present and F uture * * *
*
*
*
Tl;te evolution of the family in prehistoric times consi s ted in
the continual narrowing of the circle-originally embracing the whole tribe-with i n which marital community between the two sexes prevailed . By the successive exclusion, first of closer, then of ever remoter relat ives; and fina lly even of those merely related by marriage; every kind of group marriage was ul timately rend ered practicall y impossible; and in the end there remain e d only th e one, for th� moment sti ll l oosel y united, couple, the molecule, with the dissolution of which marriage itself completely ceases. Th is fact alone shows how little individual sex love, in the modern sense of * Now available in The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx, transcribed
734
and edited (Assen: Van
by Laurence Gorcum. 1 9 7 2 ) .
Krader
The Origin o f Family, Private Property, and State
735
the word, had to do with the origin of monogamy. The practice of all peoples i n t h i s stage affords still further p roof of this . \Vhereas under previous forms of the family men were never in want of women but, on the c ontrary, had a surfeit of them, women now became scarce a n d were sought after. Consequently with pairing marriage begins the abduction and purchase of women-widespread
s y mptoms, but nothing more of a much more deeply-rooted change that had set in.
*
*
*
The pairing family, itself too weak and unstable to make an inde pendent household necessary, or even desirable, did not by any means dissolve the com m unistic h o usehold transmitted form earlier times . But the communistic h ousehold implit:s the supremacy of women in the house, just as the exclusive recognition of a natural mother, because of the impossibility of determining the natural father with certainty, signifies high esteem for the women, that is, for the moth ers . That \v oman was the slave of man at the com mencement of society is one of the most absurd notions that have come down to us from the period of Enlightenment of the eight eenth century. Woman occupied not only a free but also a highly respected position among all savages and all barbarians of the lower and middle stages and partly even of the upper stage. Let Arthur \Vright, missionary for many years among the Seneca I roquois, tes tify what h e r place still was in the pairing family : "As to their family system, when occupying the old long h o uses [communistic households embracing several families] . . . it i s probable that some one clan [gens] predominated, the women taking husbands from other clans [gentes ] . . . . Usually the female portion ruled the house; the stores were in common; but woe to the luckless husband o r lover who was too shiftless t o do h is share of the providing. No matter how many ch ildren o r whatever goods he might have i n the h ouse, he might a t any time be ordered to pack up h i s blanket and budge; and after such orders i t would not be healthful for h i m to attempt to disobey. The h ouse would be too hot for him; and he
h a d to retreat to his own clan [gens] ; or, as was often d o n e, go and start a new matrimon ial alliance i n some other. The women were the great power among the clans [gentes] , a s everywh ere else. They did not hesita te, when occasion required, to knock o ff the horns, as it was technically called, from the h ea d of the chief a n d
s e n d him back to the ranks o f t h e warriors . " *
*
*
*
*
*
As wealth increased, it, on the one hand, gave the man a more important status in the family than the woman, and, on the other hand, created a stimulus to utilise this strengthened position *
*
*
in order to overthrow the traditional order of inheritance in favour of his children. But this was impossible as long as descent a ccord-
7 36
T h e Later Engels
i n g to mother right prevailed. This h a d , therefore, to be over thrown, a n d it was overthrown; and it was not so difficult to do this as it appears to us now. For this revolution-one of the most deci sive ever experienced by mankind-need not h a v e d isturbed one single living member of a gens . All the members c o ul d remain what they were previously. The simple decision s u ffi ced future the descendants
of the male members s h o ul d
that
in
remain in
the gens, b u t that t h ose of the females were to be excluded from the gens and transferred to that of their father . Th e reckonin g of descent through
the female line a n d
the righ t
of inheritance
through t h e mother were hereby overthrown a n d male lineage and right of i n heri tance from the father instituted. \Ve know nothing as to how and when this revolution was effected a mong the civilised peoples. actually
It falls entirely within
effected
prehistoric
times.
Tha t it was
i s more than proved by the abundant traces of
mother right which have been collected, especia lly b y Bachofe n . How easily it is accomplished can
be seen from a whole number o f
I n d i a n tri bes, a m o n g whom it has only recently taken place a n d is still proceeding, partly u n d e r t h e influence of increasing wealth a n d changed m e thods o f l i f e ( transplantation f r o m t h e f o r e s t s to the prairies ) , and partly u n d e r the m o r a l i n fl u e n c e of civilisation a n d the missionaries . Of e i g h t M i s s o u r i tribes, six have m a l e a n d two still retain the female l i neage and female inheritance l ine . Among the Shawnees, Miamis and Delawares i t has become the custom to transfer the children to the father's gens by giving them one of the gentile names obtaining therein, in order that they may inherit from h i m . "Innate human causuistry to seek to change things by changing their names ! And to fi n d loopholes for breaking through tradition within
tradition
itself,
wherever
a
direct
interest
provided
a
sufficient motive ! " ( l\farx. ) As a c onsequence, h opeless confusion arose; and m atters could only be straightened out, and partly were straightened out, by the transition to father right. "This appears a l to gether to be the most natural transition . " ( Marx ) As for what the experts on comparative law have to tell u s regarding the ways and means by which this transi tion was effected among the civilised peo ples of the Old World-almost mere hypotheses, of course-see M . Kovalevsky, Outline of the Origin and Evolution o f the Family and Property, Stockholm, 1 890' The overthrow of mother right was the world-historic defeat of the female sex. The man seized the reins in the h o u s e a lso, the woman was degraded, enthralled, the slave of the m a n ' s l ust, a mere instrument for breeding children. This lowered position of women, especially manifest among the Greeks of the Heroic and still more · of the Classical Age, has become gradually embell ished a n d d issem bled a n d , i n part, clothed i n a milder form, but b y no means abol ished .
The Origin o f Family, Private Property , and State
7 37
The first effect o f t h e sole rule o f the m e n tha t was n o w estab lish ed is shown in th e intermediate form of the family which now emerges, the pa triarchal family. Its chief attribute is not polygamy -of which more anon-but "the organisation of a number of per sons, bond and free, into a family under the paternal power of the head of the family. In the Semitic form, this family chief lives in polygamy, the bondsman has a wife and children, and the purpose of the whole organisation is the care o f flocks and herds over a lim i ted area . " The essential features are the incorporation of bondsmen and the paternal power; the Roman family, accordingly, constitutes the perfected type of this form o f the family. The word familia did not originally signify the ideal o f our modern Philistine, which is a compound
of sentimentality and
domestic disco r d . Among the
Roman s, in the beginning, i t did not even refer to the married couple and their children, but to the slaves alone . Famulus means a h ousehold slave and familia signifies the totality of slaves belonging to one individual. Even in the time of Gaius the familia, i d est patrimonium ( that is, the inherita n c e ) was bequeathed b y will. The expression was invented by the Romans to describe a new social organism, the head of which had under h im wife and children and a number of slaves, under Roman paternal power, with power o f life and death over them all . "The term, therefore, i s no older than the ironclad family system of the Latin tribes, which came in after field agriculture and after legalised servitude, as well as after the separa tion of the Greeks and ( Aryan ) Latins . " To which Marx adds : "The modern family contains in embryo not only slavery (servitus ) but serfdom also, since from the very beginning it is connected with agricultural servic e s . It contains within itself in miniature all the antagonisms which later develop on a wide scale within society and its state . " S uch a form of t h e family shows t h e transition of t h e pairing family to monogamy. In order to guarantee the fidelity of the wife, that is, the paternity of the children, the woman is placed i n the man's absolute power; if he kills her, he is but exercising his right . *
*
*
\Ve are confronted with this new form of the family in all its severitv among the Greeks . While, as l\Iarx observes, the position of the g � ddesses i n mythology represents an ea rlier period, when . women still occupied a freer and more respected place, III the Heroic Age we already find women degraded owing to the predomi nance o f the man and the competition of female slaves . One may read in the Odyssey how Telemachus cuts his mother short � nd enjoins silence upon her. In Homer the you � g female ca p lves become the objects of the sensual lust of the victors; the mlhtary
�
chiefs, one after the other, according to rank, choose th e most beau-
73 8
The Later Engels
tiful ones for themse lves . The whole of the Iliad, as we know, revolve s around the quarrel betwee n Achille s and Agame mnon over such a female slave. I n c onnecti on with each Homer ic hero of import ance mentio n is made of a captive maiden w i t h whom he shares tent a n d bed. Th ese maiden s are taken back home to the conj ugal ho use, as was Cassand ra by Ag a memno n i n A schylus . Sons born of these slaves receive a small share of their father's estate and are regarde d as freemen . Teukro s was such an illegitim ate son of Telamo n and was permitt ed to adopt his father's name. The wedded wife is expecte d to tolerate all this, but to maintai n strict chastity �nd conj ugal fidelity herself. True, i n the Heroic Age the . Greek wife I S more respect ed than in the period of civil isation; for the usband , howeve r, she is, in reality, merely the mother of h is . . legItIm ate hens, his chief housek eeper, and the superin tenden t of the female slaves, whom he may make, and does make h is concu bines at w il l . It is the existen ce of slavery s i de by s i de with mono gamy, he existenc e o f beautif ul young slaves who belong to the man WIth all they have, that from the ve ry beginn ing stampe d on monoga my its specific charact er as monog amy only for the woman , but not for the man . And it retains this charact er to this day.
�
�
�
* * *
*
*
*
In Euripides, the wife is described as oikurema, a thing for
housekeeping ( th e word is in the neuter gender ) , and apart from the business of bearing children, she was nothing m ore to the Athe nian than the chief h ousemaid. The h usband had h is gymnastic exercises, h is public affairs, from which the wife was excluded; in addition, he often had female slaves at his disposal and, i n the hey day of Athens, extensive prostitution, which was viewed with favour by the state, to say the least . I t was preciseJy on the basis of this prostitution that the sole outstanding Greek women developed, who by their es p rit and artistic taste towered a s much above the general level of ancient womanhood as the Spartiate women did by virtue of their character. That one had first to become a hetaera in order to become
a
woman is the strongest indictment of the Athenian
family. In the course o f time, this Athenian family became the model upon which not only the rest of the I onians, but a lso all the Greeks of the mainland and of the colonies increasingly moulded their domestic relationships . But despite all seclusion and surveillance the Greek women found opportunities often enough for deceiving their h usbands . The latter, who would have been ashamed to evince any love for their own wives, amused themselves with hetaerae i n all kinds of amours . But the degradation of the women recoiled on the men themselves and degraded them too, until they sank into the
The Origin of Family, Private Property, and State
739
perversion of boy-love, degrading both themselves a n d their gods b y the myth of Ganymede. This was th e origin of monogamy, as far as w e can trace it among the most civilised and highly-developed people o f antiquity. It was not in any \vay the fruit of ind ividual sex love, with which i t h a d absolutely nothing i n common, for the marriages remained mar riages of convenience, as before. It was the first form of the family based not on natural but on economic conditions, namely, on the victory
of
private p roperty
over
original,
naturally
developed,
common ownership . The rule of the man in the family, the procrea tion of children who could only be his, destined to be the heirs of his wealth-these alone were frankly avowed by the Greeks as the exclusive aims o f monogamy. For the rest, it was a burden, a duty to the gods , to the state and to their ancestors, which j us t h a d to be fulfilled. I n Athens t h e law m a d e not o n l y marriage compulsory, but also t h e fulfilment by the m a n o f a minimum of the so-called conj u gal duties . Th us, monogamy does not by any means make its appearance in history as the reconciliation of man and woman , still less as the highest form of such
a
reconcilia tion . On the contrary, it appears as
th e subjection of one sex by the other, as the proclamation of a con flict between the sexes entirely unkn own hitherto in prehistoric times . In an old unpublished manuscript, the work of Marx and myself i n 1 8 46, 1 I fi n d the following : "The first division o f labour is that between m a n and woman for chil d breedin g . " And today I can add : The first class antagonism which appears in history coin cides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamian marriage, and the firs t class oppression with that o f the female sex by the male. Monogamy was a great h istori cal advance, b u t at the same time it inaugurated, along with slavery and private weal th, that epoch, lasting until today, in which every advance is likewise a relative regression, in which the welLbeing and develop ment of the one group are attained by the misery and repression of the other. It is the cellular form of civilised society, in which we can already study the nature of the antagonisms and con tradictions which develop fully in the latter. *
*
*
\V ith the rise o f property differentiation-that is, as
far
back a s the upper stage of barbarism-wage labour appears sporadi cally a longside of slave labour; and simultaneously, as its necessary co rrelate, the professional prostitution o f free women appears side by side with the forced surrender of the female slave. Thus, the her itage bequeathed to civilisation by group marriage is double-sided, just as everything engendered by civilisation is double-sided, d o u1. The reference is to The German Ideology.
740
The Later E ngels
ble-tongued, self-contradictory and antagonistic : on the one hand, monogamy, on the other, hetaerism, including i ts m ost extreme form, prostitution. Hetaerism is as much a social insti tution as any other; it i s a continuation of the old sexual freedom-in favour of the men. Although, in reality, it is not only tolerated but even prac tised with gusto, particularly by the ruling classes, it i s condemned in word s . In reality, however, this condemnation by no means h its the men who indulge in it, it hits only the women : they are ostra cised and cast out i n order to proclaim once again the absolute domination of the male over the female sex a s the fundamental law of society. A second contradiction, however, is hereby
devel oped within
monoga m y i tself. By the side of the husband, whose l ife i s embel lished by hetaerism, stands the neglected wife. And it i s j us t as i m possible to have one side of a contradiction without the other as i t is t o retain t h e whole o f an apple i n o n e ' s h a n d after h a l f h a s been eaten . Nevertheless, the men appear to have thought different l y, until their wives taught them to know better. Two permanent social figures, previously unknown, appear on the scene along with m onogamy-the wife's para mour and the cuckold . The men h ad gained the victory over the women, but the act of crowning the victor was magnanimously undertaken by the vanquished. Adultery -proscribed, severely penalised, but irrepressible-became an un avoidable social institution alongside of monogamy and hetaerism. The assured paternity of children was now, as before, based, a t best. on moral conviction; and in order to solve the insolu ble contradic tion, Article 3 1 2 of the Code Napoleon decreed : "L'enfant conqu
pendant le maTiage a POUT PeTe le maTi,"
"a child conceived during
marriage has for its father the husband. " This is the final outcome of three thousand years of monogamy. Thus, i n the monogamian family, in those cases that fai thfu lly reflect its historical origin and that clearl y bring out the sharp con fl i c t between man and woman resu lting from the exclusive dom ina tion of the male, we have a picture in miniature of the very antago nisms and contradictions in which society, split up into classes since the commencement of civil isation, moves, without being able to resolve and overcome them. Naturally, I refer h ere o n l y to th ose cases of monogamy where matrimonial life really takes its c o u rse according to the rules governing the origina l character of the whole institution, but where the wife rebels against the domination of the h usban d. That this is not the case with all marriages n o one knows better than the German Philistine, who is no more capable of ruling in the home than in the state, and whose wife, therefore, with full j ustification, wears the breeches of which he is unworthy. But in consolation he imagines h imself to be far superior to h is
The Origin of Family, Private Property, and State
741
French companion in misfortune, who, more often than he, fares far w orse. *
*
*
Although monogamy was the only known form of the family o u t of w h i c h modern s e x l o v e coul d develop, i t d o e s not follow t h a t t h i s l o v e developed w i thin i t exclusively, o r even predominantly, a s the mutual love of man and wife . The whole nature of strict mono gamian marriage under male domination ruled this out . Among all historically active classes, that is, among all ruling classes, matri mony remained what it had been since pairing marriage-a matter of convenience arranged by the parents . And the first form of sex love that his torically emerges as a passion, and as a passion in which any p erson (at least of the ruling classes ) has a right to indulge, as th e highest form of th e sexual impulse-which i s precisely its spe cific feature-this, its first form, the chivalrous love of th e Middle Ages, w a s by no means conj ugal love. On t h e contrary, i n i t s classical form, among t h e Proven�als, it steers under full sail towards adultery, the praises of which are sung by their poets. The
"Albas,"
in German
Tagelieder,
are the flower of Proven�al love
poetry. They describe in glowing colours how the knight lies with h is love-th e wife o f another-while the watchman stands guard outside, calling him at the first faint streaks of dawn
( alba )
so that
he may escape unobserved. The parting scene then constitutes the climax. The Northern French as well as the worthy Germans, like wise adopted this style of poetry, along with the manners of chival rous love which corresponded to it; and on this same suggestive theme our own , old \Volfram von Eschenbach has left u s three exquisite Songs o f the Dawn, which I prefer to his three long h eroic poems. Bourgeois marriage o f our o w n times i s of t w o kinds . I n Catholic countries the parents, as heretofore, still provide a suitable wife for their young bourgeois son, and the consequence is naturally the full est unfolding of the contradiction inherent in monogamy-flourish ing hetaerism on the part of the husband, and flourishing adultery o n the part of the wife. The Catholic Church doubtless abolished divorce only because i t was convinced that for adultery, as for death, there is no cure whatsoever. I n Protestant countries, on" the other hand, i t i s the rule that the bourgeois son is allowed to seek
a
wife for h imself from his own c lass, more or less freely. Conse quently, marriage can be based on a certain degree of love w hich, for decency's sake, is always assumed, in accordance with Protestant hypocrisy. In this case, hetaerism on the part of the men i s less actively pu rsued, and ad ultery on the woma n's p a r t is not so m uch the rule. Since, in every kind of marriage, however, people remain what they were before they married, and since the citizens of Prot-
742
The Later Engels
estant countries are mostly Philistines, this Protestant monogam y leads merely, if we take the average of the best cases, to a wedded life of leaden boredom, wh ich is described as domestic bliss . The best mirror of these two ways of marriage is the novel; the French novel for the Catholic style, and the German novel for the Protes tan t . In both cases "he gets i t " : in the German novel the young man ge ts the girl; in the French, the h usband gets the cuckold's h o rns. Wh ich of the two is in the worse plight is not always easy to make out. For the dullness of the German novel excites the same horror in the French bourgeois as the " im morality" of the French novel excites in
the
" Berlin is becoming
a
German
Philistine,
although lately,
since
metropolis , " the German novel has begun to
deal a little less timidly with hetaerism and adultery, long known t o exist there. I n both cases, however, marriage is determined by the class posi tion o f the participants, and to that extent always remains marriage of convenience. In both cases, this marriage of convenience often enough turns into the crassest prostitution-sometimes on both sides, but much more generally on the part of the wife, who differs from the ordinary courtesan only in that she does not h i re out h e r
body, like a wage-worker, o n piecework, but sells i t into slavery once for all . And Fourier's words h old good for all marriages of conven ience : "Just as in grammar two negatives make a positive, so in the m o rals of marriage, two prostitutions make one virtue . " Sex love in the relation of husband and wife i s and can become the rule only among the oppressed classes, that is, a t the present day, among the proletariat, no matter whether this relationship i s officially sanc tioned or n o t . But h ere all the foundations of classical monogamy are removed . Here, there is a complete absence of all property, for the safeguarding and inheritance of which monogamy and male domination were established . Therefore, there i s no s ti mulus what ever here to assert male domination. \Vhat is more, the means, too, are absent; bourgeois law, which protects this domination, exists only for the propertied classes and their dealings with the proletari ans . It costs money, and therefore, owing to the worker's poverty has n o validity in his attitude towards his wife. Personal and social relations of quite a different sort are the decisive factors here . More over, since large-scale indus try has transferred the woman from the house to the labour market and the factory, and makes her, often enough, the bread-winner of the family, the last remnants of male domination i n the proletarian home have lost all foundation-ex cept, ·perhaps, for some of that brutality towards women which became firmly rooted with the establishment of monogamy. Thus, the proletarian family i s no longer monogamian in th e strict sense, even in cases of the most passionate love and strictest faithfulness of the two parties, and despite all spiritual and worldly benedictions
The Origin of Family, Private Property, and State
743
which may have been r � ceived . The two eternal adjuncts of mono
gamy-hetaerism and adultery-th erefore, play an almost negligible role here; the woman has regained, in fact, the right of separation, and when the man and woman cannot get along they prefer to parL I n short, proletarian marriage is monogamian in the etymological sense of the word, but by no means in the historical sense. O u r jurists, to be sure, hold that the progress of legislation to an increasing degree removes all cause for complaint on the pa r t of t h e woman. Modern civilised systems o f law a r e recognising m o r e a n d more, first, t h a t , i n order to be effective marriage m u s t be an agree ment voluntarily entered into by both parties; and secondly, that during marriage, too, both parties must be on an equal footing in respect to rights and obligations . If, however, these two demands were consistently carried into effect, women would have all that they could ask for. This typical lawyer's reasoning is exactly the same as that with which the radical republican bourgeois dismisses the proletarian. The labour contract is supposed to be voluntarily entered into by both parties . B u t it is taken to be voluntarily entered into soon as the law has put both parties on a n equal footing
on
as
paper.
The power given to one party by its different class position, the pressure i t exercises on the other-the real economic position of both-all this is no concern of the law. And both parties, again, a r e s upposed to h a v e e q u a l rights f o r t h e duration of t h e labour con tract, unless one or the other of the pa rties expressly waived them. Tha t t h e concrete economic situation compels t h e worker to forego even the slightest semblance of equal rights-this again is som6thing the law cannot h e1p. As far as marriage is concerned, even the m o s t progressive law is fully satisfied as soon as the parties formally register their voluntary desire to get married. \Vhat h appens behind the legal curtains, where real life is enacted, how this voluntary agreement i s arrived at -is no concern of the law and the j urist . And yet the simplest com parison of laws should serve to show the jurist what this voluntary agreement really amounts to. In countries where the children . are legally assured of an obligatory share of their parents' property and thu s cannot be disinherited-in Germany, in the countries under French law, etc .-the child ren must obtain their parents ' consent in the question of marriage. I n countries under English law, where parental consent to marriage is not legally requisite, the parents have full testa tory freedom over their property and can, if they so desire, cut their children off with a shillling. It is clear, therefore, that despite this, or rather just because of this, among those classes which have something to inherit, freedom to marry is not one whit greater in England and America than in France o r Germany. The posit ion i s no better with regard to the juridical equality of
744
The Later Engels
man and woman in marriage. The equalit y, of the two before the law, which i s a legacy of previous social conditions, is not the cause but the effect of t he economic oppression of women. I n the old communistic household, which embraced numerous c ouples and their children, the administration of the househ old, entrusted to the women, was j us t as much a public, a socially necessary industry as the providing of food by the men . This situation changed with the patriarchal family, and even more with the monogamian individual family. The administration o f the household lost its public charac ter. It was no longer the concern of society. It became a
service.
private
The wife became the first domestic servant, pushed out of
participation in social p ro duction. Only modern large-scale industry again threw open to h e r-and only to the proletarian woman a t that-that avenue to s o c i a l production; but in s u c h a way that, when she fulfils her duties in the private service of her family, she remains excluded from public production and cannot earn anything; and when she wishes to take part in public industry and earn her living independently, she is not in a position to fulfil h er family duties. What applies to the woman in the factory applies to her in all the professions, right up to medicine and law. The modern indi vidual family is based on the open o r disguised domestic enslave ment of the woman; and modern society is a mass composed solely of individual families as its molecules . Today, in the great majority of cases the man has to be the earner, the bread-winner of the family, a t least among the propertied classes, and this gives h im a dominating position which requires no special legal privileges . I n the family, h e i s the bourgeois; the wife represents the proletariat. In the industrial world, however, the specific character of the eco nomic oppression that weighs down the proletariat stands o u t in all its sharpness only after all the special legal privileges of the capitalist class have been set aside a n d the complete j uridical equality of both classes is established. The democratic republic does not abolish the antagonism between the the two classes; o n the contrary, it provides the field on which it is fought out. And, similarly, the peculiar ch a r acter of man ' s domination over woman in the modern family, and the necessity, as well as the manner, of establishing real social equality between the two, will be brought out into full relief only when both are completely equal before the law. I t will then become evident that the first premise for the emancipation of women is the reintroduction of the entire female sex into public industry; and that this again demands that the quality possessed by the individual family of being the economic unit of society be abolished . *
We have,
*
*
then, three chief forms of marriage, which, by and
large, conform to the three main stages of human devel opment. For savagery-group marriage; for barbarism-pairing marriage; for civ-
The Origin of Family, Private Property, and State
745
ilisation-monogamy, supplemented by adultery and prostitution . In the upper stage of barbarism, between pairing marriage a n d mon ogamy, there i s wedged in the dominion exercised by men over female slaves, and polygamy. As our whole exposition has shown, the advance to be noted in this sequence is linked with the peculiar fact that while women are more and more deprived of the sexual freedom of group marriage, the men are not. Actually, for men, group marriage exists to this day. \Vhat for a woman is a crime entailing dire legal and social consequences, i s regarded in the case of a man as being honourable or, a t most, as a slight moral stain that one bears with pleasure. The more the old traditional hetaerism is changed in our day by capital ist commodity producti on and adapted to it, and the more it · i s transformed i n t o unconcealed prostitution, the more demoralising are its effects. And it demoralises the men far more than it does the wome n . Among women, prostitution degrades only those unfortu
nates wh o fall into its clutches; and even these are not d eg raded to the degree that is generally believed . On the other hand, it degrades the character of the entire male world. Th us, in nine cases out of ten, a long engagement is practically a preparatory school for conj ugal infidelity. \Ve are now approaching a social evolution in which the hitherto existing economic foundations of monogamy will disappear j us t as certainly as will t hose of its supplement-prostitution . l\lonogamy arose out of the concentration of considerable wealth i n the hands
of one person-and that a man-and out of the desire to bequeath this wealth to this man's children and to no one else ' s . For this p u r pose monogamy was essential on the woman's part, but not on the man's; so that this monogamy of the woman in no way hindered th e overt or covert polygamy of the man . The impending social rev olution, however, by transforming at least the far greater part of permanent inheritable wealth-the means of production-into social property, will reduce all this anxiety about inheritance to a minim u m . S ince monogamy arose from economic causes, will it disappear when these causes disappear? One might not unj ustly answe r : far from disappearing, it will only begin to be completely real ised. For with the conversion of the means of production into social property, wage labour, the proletar iat, also disappears, and therewith, also, the necessity for a certain -statistically calculable-number of women to surrender them selves for money. Prostitution disappears; monogamy, instead of declining, finally becomes a reality-for the men as well. A t all events, the position o f the men thus undergoes consider able change. B u t that of the women, of all women, also undergoes important alteration . \Vith the passage of the means of production into common property, the individual family ceases to be the eco nomic u n i t of society. Private housekeeping is transformed i n to a
746
The Later E.ngels
social industry. The care and education of the children becomes a public matter. Society takes care of all children equally, irrespective of whether they are born i n wedlock o r not. Th us, the anxiety about the "consequences , " which is today the most important social facto r-both moral and economic-that hinders a girl from giving herself freely to the man she loves, disappears. \Vill this not be cause enough for a gradual rise of more unrestrained sexual inter course, and along with it, a more lenient public opinion regarding virginal h onour and feminine shame? And finally, have we not seen that monogamy and p rostitution i n the modern world, although opposites, are nevertheless inseparable opposites, poles of the same social conditions?
Can prostitution disappear without dragging
monogamy with it into the abyss? Here a new factor comes into operation, a factor that, at most, existed in embryo a t the time when monogamy developed, namely individual sex love. No such thing as individual sex love existed before the Middle Ages. That personal beauty, intimate association, similarity i n inclin ations, etc ., aroused desire for sexual intercourse among people of opposite sexes, that men· as well as women were not totally indiffer ent to the question of with whom they entered into this most inti mate relation is obvious. B u t this is still a far cry from the sex love of o u r day. Throughout antiquity marriages were arranged by the parents; the parties quietly acquiesced. The little conj ugal love that was known to antiquity was not in any way a subjective inclination, but an obj ective duty; not a reason for b u t a correlate of marriage . I n antiquity, love affairs i n the modern sense occur only outside official society. The shepherds, whose j oys and sorrows in love are s u ng by Theocritus and Moschus, or by Longus's Daphnis and
Chloe
are mere slaves, who have no share in the state, the sphere of
the free citizen. Except among the slaves, h o wever, we find love affairs only as disintegration products of the declining ancient world; and with women who are also beyond the pale o f official society, with hetaerae, that is, with alien or freed women; i n Athens beginning with the eve of its decline, i n Rome a t the time of the emperors . I f love affairs really occurred between free male and female citizens, i t was only in the form -of adultery. And sex love in our sense of the term was s o immaterial to that classical love poet of antiquity old Anacreon, that even the sex of the beloved one was a matter of com plete indifference to h i m . O u r s e x love differs materially from the simple sexual desire, the
eros, of the ancients. First, it presupposes reciprocal love on the part of the loved one; i n this respect, the woman stands on a p a r with the man; whereas in the ancient
eros,
the woman was by no means
always consulted. Secondly, sex love attains a degree of intensity and permanency where the two parties regard non-possession or
The Origin of Family, Private Property, and State
747
separation as a great, if n ot the greatest, misfortune; in order to possess each other they take great hazards, even risking life itself what in antiquity happened, at bes t , only in cases of adultery. And finally, a new moral standard arises for judging sexual intercourse. The question aske d is not only whether such int ercourse was legiti_ mate or illicit, but also whether it arose from mutual love ar n o t . I t g o e s without saying t h a t in f e u d a l or bourgeois practice this new standard fares no better than all the other moral standards-it is simply ignored. But it fares n o worse, either. It is recognized in theory, on paper, like all the rest. And more than this cannot be expected for the p rese n t . \Vhere antiquity broke o ff w i t h i t s s t a r t towards s e x l o v e , the M iddle Ages began, namely, with adultery. \Ve have already de scribed chivalrous love, which gave rise to the Songs of the Dawn . There is still a wide gulf between this kind of love, which aimed a t breaking up matrimony, and the love destined to be its founda tion, a gulf never completely bridged by the age of chivalry. Even when we pass from the frivolous Latins to the virtuous Germans, we find, in the Nibelungenlied, that Kriemhild-although se cretly in love with Siegfried every whit as much as he is with her nevertheless, in reply to Gunther's intimation that he has plighted her to a knight whom h e does not name, answers simply : "You have n o need to ask; as you command, so will I be forever. He whom you, my l o rd, choose for my husband, to him will I gladly plight my troth . " It never occurs to her that her love could possibly be considered i n this matter. Gunther seeks the han d of Brunhild with out ever having seen her, and Etzel does the same with Kriemhild . The same occurs in the Gudrun, where Sigebant of I reland seeks the hand of Ute the Norwegian, Hetel of Hegelingen that of Hilde of Ireland; and lastly, Siegfried of Morland, Hartmut of Ormany and Herwig of See land seek the hand of Gudrun; and here for the first time it happens that Gudrun, of her own free will, decides in favour of the last named. As a rule, the bride of a young prince is selected by his parents; if t h e s e are no longer alive, he chooses her himself with the counsel o f his highest vassal chiefs, whose word· carries great weight i n all cases . Nor can i t be otherwis e . For the k night, or baron, j us t as for the prince himself, marriage i s a po litical act, an opportunity for the accession o f power through new alliances; the interests of the House and not individual inclination are the decisive factor. How can love here hope to have the las t word regarding marriage? It was the same for the guildsman of the medieval towns. The very privileges which protected him-the guild charters with their special stipulations, the artificial lines of demarcation which legally separated him from other guilds, from his own fellow guildsmen and from his j ourneymen and apprentices-considerably restricted the
748
The Later Engels
circle in which he could h op e to secure
a
suitable spouse. And the
question as to who was the most suitable was definitely decided under this complicated system, not by individual inclination, but by family in terest. Up to the end of the Middle Ages, therefore, marriage, in the overwhelming ma jority of cases, remained what it had been from the commencement, an affair that was not decided by the two prin cipal parties . In the beginning one came into the worl d married, married to a whole group of the opposite sex . A similar relation probably existed in the later forms of group marriage, only with an ever-increasing narrowing of the group. In the pairing family i t is the rule that the mothers arrange their children's marriages; and here also, considerations of new ties of relationship that are to strengthen the young coupl e ' s position i n the gens and tribe are the decisive factor . And when, with the predominance of private property over common property, and with the interest in i nh er itance, father right and monogamy gain the ascendancy, marriage becomes more than ever dependent on economic consideration s . The
form
o f marriage by purchase disappears, the transaction itself
is to an ever-increasing degree carried out in such a way that not only the woman but the man also is appraised, not b y his personal q u alities but by his possessions . The idea that the mutual inclina tions o f the principal parties should be the overriding reason for matrimony had been unheard-of i n the practice of the ruling classes from the very beginning . Such things took place, a t b est, in romance only, or-among the oppressed classes, which did not count. This was the situation found by capitalist production wh en, following the era of geographical discoveries, it set out to conquer the world through world trade and manufacture. One would think that this mode of matrimony should have suited i t exceedingly, and such was actually the case. And yet-the irony o f world h is tory is unfathomable-it was capitalist production that had to make the decisive b reach in i t . By tran sforming all things into commodities, i t dissolved all ancient traditional relations, and for inherited cus toms and historical rights i t substituted purchase and sale, "free" contract. And H. S. Maine, the English j urist, believed that he made a colossal discovery when he said that our entire progress in comparison with previous epochs consists in our having evolved from status to contract, from an inherited state of affairs to one voluntarily contracted-a statement which, in so far as i t is correct, was contained long ago in the Communist Manifesto. B u t t h e closing of contracts presupposes people w h o c a n freely dispose of their persons, actions and possessions, and who meet each other on equal terms. To create such "free" and "equal" people was precisely one of the chief tasks of capitalist production. AI-
The Origin of Family, Private Property, and State
749
though in the beginning this took place o n l y in a semiconscious manner, and in religious guise to boot, nevertheless, from the time of the Lutheran and Calvinistic Reformation i t became a firm prin ciple tha t a person was completely responsible for his actions only i f he possessed full freedom o f the will when performing them, and that it was an ethical d u t y to resist all compulsion to c o m m i t un ethical acts . But how does this fi t in with the previous practice of matrimony? According to bourgeois conceptions, matrimony was a contract, a legal affair, indeed the most important of all, since it d isposed of the body and mind of two persons for life. True enough, formally the bargain was struck voluntarily; it was not done without the consent of the parties; but how this consen t was obtained, and who really arranged the marriage was known only too well . B u t if real freedom to decide was demanded for all other contracts , why not for this one? Had not the two young people about to be paired the right freely to dispose of themselves, their bodies and its organs? Did not sex love become the fashion as a consequence of chivalry, and was not the love of husband and wife i ts correct bourgeois form, as against the adulterous love of the knights? B ut if it was the duty of married people to love each other, was it not j us t as much the duty of lovers to marry each other and nobody else? And did not the right of these lovers stand higher than that o f par ents, relatives and other traditional marriage brokers and match makers? If the right of free personal investigation unceremoniously forced its way into church and religion, how could i t halt at the intolerable claim of the older generation to dispose of body a n d soul, the property, the happiness and unhappiness of the younger genera tion? These questions were bound to arise in a period which loosened all the old social ties and which shook the foundations of all tradi tional conception s . At one stroke the size of the world had increased
nearly tenfold. Instead of only a quadrant of a hemisphere the whole globe was now open to the gaze o f the \Vest Europeans who h a s tened to take possession of the other seven quadrants. And the thousand -year-old barriers set up by the medieval prescri bed mode of thought vanished in the same way as did the old, narrow barriers
of the homeland . An infinitely wider horizon opened up both to man's outer and inner eye . Of ",hat avail were the good intentions of respectability, the honoured guild privileges handed down through the generations, to the young man who was allured by I n d i a ' s riches, by the gold and silver mines of Mexico and Potosi? I t was the knight -errant period o f the bourgeoisie; i t had its ro
mance also, and its love dreams, but on a bourgeois basis and, in the last analysis, with bourgeois ends in view. Thus it happened that the rising bourgeoisie, particularly in
the Protestant countries, where the existing order was shaken up
750
The Later E ngels
most o f all, increasingly recognized freedom of contract for marriage also and carried it through i n the manner described above. Marriage remained class marriage, but, within the con fines of the class, the parties were accorded a certain degree of freedom of choice. And on paper, in moral theory as in poetic description, nothing was more unshakably established than that every marriage
not based
on
mutual sex love and on the really free agreement of man and wife was immoral . In short, love m arriage was proclaimed a h um a n r i g h t; n o t only as m a n ' s r i g h t
( droit de l ' h om m e ) b ut ( droit de la femme ) .
a l s o , b y way
of exception, as woma n ' s right
B u t in one respect ' this h uman right differed from all other so called human righ ts. \Vhile, in practice, the latter remained limited to the ruling class, the bou rgeoisie-the oppressed class, th e prole tariat, being directly or indirectly deprived of them-the irony of history asserts itself here once agai n . The ruling cl ass continues to be dominated by the familiar economic infl uences and, therefore, only in exception;l cases can i t show really voluntary marriages; wherea s, as we h a v e seen, these are the rule a m o n g the dominated c l a s s . Th us, f u l l freedom in marriage c a n become generally operative only when the aboli tion o f capitalist production, and o f the prop erty relations created by it, has removed all those seco ndary eco nomic considerations which still exert so powerful a n influence on the choice of a partner. Then, no other motive remains than mutual ' affection. Since sex love is by its very nature exclusive-although this exc l u siveness is fully realised today only in the woman-th en marriage based on sex love is by its very nature monogamy. \Ve have seen h ow right Bachofen was when he regarded the advance from group marriage to individual marriage chiefly as the work of the women; only the advance from pairing ma rriage to monogamy can be placed, to the men's account, and, h is torically, this consisted essentially in a worsening of the position of women and in faci litating in fidelity on the part of the men .With the disappearance of the economic con siderations which compel led women
to tolerate the customary
infidelity of the men-the anxiety about their own livelihood and even ' more about the future of their children-the equality of woman thus achieved w i l l , judging from all previous experience, resu lt far more effectively in the men becoming really monogamous than i n the women becoming polyand rous. What will m ost definitely disappear from monogamy, however, is a l l the characteristics stamped on it in conseq uence of its having arisen out of property relationships . These are, first, the dominance o f the man, and second l y, the i n dissolubility of marriage. The pre dominance of the man in marriage is simply
a
consequence of h i s
economic pred ominance and will vanish with i t a u tomatically. The ind issolubility of marriage i s partly the result of the economic con-
The Origin of Family, Private Property, and State
751
ditions under which monogamy a r ose, and partly a tradition from the time when th e connection between these economic condit ions and monogamy was not yet correctly understood and was exagger ated by religion. Today it has been breached a thousandfold. I f only marriages that a r e based o n love are moral, then, also, only those are moral in which love continues . The duration of the urge of individual sex love differs very much according to the individual, p a rticularly among men; and a definite cessation of affection, o r its displacement by a new passionate love, makes separation a bl essing for both parties as well a s for society. People will only be spared the experience of wading through the useless mire of divorce proceed mgs . Thus, what we can conjecture at present about the regulation o f s e x relationsh ips after the impending effacement o f capitalist p ro duction is, in the m a in , of a negative character, limited mostly to what will vanish . B u t what will be added? That will be settled after a new generation has grown up : a generation of men who never in all their lives have had occasion to purchase a woman's surrender either with money or with any other means of social power, and of women who have never been obliged to surrender to any man out of any consideration other than tha t of real love, or to refrain from giving themselves to their beloved for fear of the economic conse quence s . Once s uch people appear, they will not care a rap about what we today think they should d o . They will establish their own practice and their own public opinion, conformable therewith, on the practice of each individual-a nd that's the end of it. *
*
*
The Origin of the State * * * Above we d iscussed separately each of the three main forms in which the state was built up on the ruins of the gentile constitution . Athens represented the purest, most classical form .
Here the state sprang directly and mainly out of the class antag6� nisms that developed within gentile society . In Rome gentile society becam e an exclusive a ristocracy amidst numerous plebs, standing outside of it, having no rights but only duties . The victory o f the plebs burst the old gentile constitution asunder and erected on its ruins the state, in which both the gentile aristo cracy and the plebs were soon wholly abs orbed . Finally, among the German vanquishers of the Roman E m p i re, the state sprang up as a direct result of the conquest of large foreign territories, which the gentile constitution had no means of ruling. As this conquest did not necessitate either a serious struggle with the old population o r a more advanced divi sion of labour, and as conquered and conquerors were almost at the
7 52
The Later Engels
same stage of economic development and thus the economic basis of society remained t h e same as before, therefore, the gentile consti tution could continue for many centuries in a changed : territorial form, in the shape of a Mark constitution, and even rejuvenate itself ' for a time in enfeebled form in the noble and patrician families of later years, and even in peasant families, as in Dithmarschen .2 The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without; j ust as little is it "the reality of the ethical idea," "the image and reality· o f reason , " as Hegel maintains. Rather, i t is a product o f society a t a certain stage o f development; i t is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it is cleft into irreconcilable antag onisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these an tagonisms, classes with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves and society in sterile struggle, a power seem ingly standing . above society b ecame necessary for the purpose of moderating t h e conflict, o f keeping i t within the bounds o f " order"; and this power, arisen out o f society, but placing itself above it, and increasingly alienating itself from it, i s the state. I n contradistinction to the old gentile organisation, the state, first, divides its subjects according to territory. As we have seen, the old gentile associations, built upon and held together by ties of blood, became inadequate, largely because they presupposed that the mem bers were bound to a given territory, a bond which had long ceased to exist. The territory remained, but the people had become mobile. Hence, division according to territory was taken as the point of departure, and citizens were allowed to exercise their public rights and duties wherever they settled, irrespective of gens and tribe . This organisation of citizens according to locality is a feature common to all states . That is why i t s ee m s natural to us; but we have seen what long and arduous struggles were needed before i t could replace, in Athens and Rome, the old organisation according to gentes .
The second i s the establishment o f a public power which no
longer directly coincided with the population organising itself as an armed force. This special public power is necessary, because a self acting armed organisation of the population has become impossible since the cleavage into classes . The slaves also belonged to the pop ulation; the 90, 000 citizens of Athens formed only a privileged class as against the 3 6 5,000 slaves. The people's army o f the Athenian democracy was an aristocratic public power against the slaves, whom it kept in check; however, a gendarmerie also became necessary to keep the citizens in check, as we related above. This public power exists in every state; it consists not merely of armed people but also 2. The fi r s t h i storian who had at least an approximate idea of the nature of t h e gens was N iebuhr, thanks t o his knowledge o f the D i thmarschen fami-
lies-to which, however, h e also owes the errors he mechanically copied from there. r Engels 1
The Origin of Family, Private Property, and State
753
of material a d j uncts, prisons and institutions of coercion of all kinds, of which gentile society knew nothing. It may be very insig nificant, almost infinitesimal, in societies where class antagonisms are still undeveloped and in out-of-the-way places as was the case a t certain times a n d i n certain regions in the United States o f Amer ica . It grows stronger, however, in proportion as class antagonisms w ithin the state become more acute, and as adjacent states become larger and more populate d . \Ve have only to look at our present-day E urope, where class struggl e and rivalry in conquest have screwed up the public power to such a pitch that it threatens to devour the whole of society and even the state. I n order to main t a in this public power, contributions from the citizens become necessary-taxes. These were absolutely unknown in gentile society; but we know enough about them today. As civilisa tion advances, these taxes become inadequate; the state makes drafts on the future, contracts loans, public debts . Old Europe can tell a tale about these, too. I n possession o f the public power and of the right to levy taxes, the officials, as organs of s ociety, now stand aboV'e society. The free, v oluntary respect that was accorded to the organs o f the gentile con stitution does not satisfy them, even i f they could gain it; b eing the vehicles of a power that is becoming alien to society, respect for them must be enforced by means of exceptional laws by v irtue of which they e n joy special sanctity and inviolabil ity. The shabbiest police servant in the civilised state has more "authority" than all th e organs o f gen tile society put together; but the most p owerful prince and the greatest statesman, or general, of civilisation m a y well e n v y the humblest gentile c h i e f for t h e un coerced and undis puted respect that i s paid to him. The one stands in the midst o f society, t h e other is -forced to attempt t o represent something out side and above i t . As the state arose from t h e need t o hold class antagonisms in check, but a s it a rose, at the same time, in the midst of the conflict o f these classes, i t is, as a rule, the state o f the most powerful, eco� nomically dominant class wh ich, through the medium of the st;ite, becomes also the politically dominant class, and thus acquires new mean s of holding down and exploiting the oppressed cla s s . Thl,ls, the state o f antiquity was above all the state of the slave owners for the purpose of holding down the slaves, as the feudal state was the organ of the nobility for holding down the p easant serfs and bonds men, and the modern representative state is an instrument of exploitation of wage labour by capital . By way of exception, how ever, periods occur i n which the warring classes balance each other s o nearly that the state power, a s ostensible mediator, acquires, for the moment, a certain degree of independence of both. Such was the absolute monarchy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
754
The Later Engels
which h el d the balance between the nobility and the class of burgh ers; such was the Bonapartism of the First, and still more of the Second French Empire, which played o ff the proletariat again s t �he bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie against the proletariat . The latest performance of this kind, in which ruler and rul ed appear equally ridiculous, is the new German Empire of the B i smarck nation : the capitalists and workers are balanced against each other and equally cheated for the benefit of the impoverished Prussian cabbage Junkers. In most of the historical states, the rights of citizens are, besides, apportioned according to their wealth, thus directly expressing the fa ct that the state is an organisation of the possessing class for its protection against the non-possessing class . I t was so a lready in the Athenian and Roman classification according to p roperty. I t was s o i n the mediaeval fe udal state, i n which the alignment of political power was in conformity with t h e amount of land owned . I t i s seen in the electoral qualifications of the modern representative states . Yet this political recognition of property distinctions is by no means essenti al . On the contrary, it marks a low stage of state develop ment . The highest form of the state, the democratic republic, which under our modern conditions of society is more and more becoming an inevitable necessity, and is the form of state in which alone the last decisive struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie can be fought out-the democratic republic officially knows nothing any more of property distinctions . In it wealth exercises its power indi rectly, b u t all the more surely. On the one hand, in the form of the direct corruption of officials, of which America provides the classical example; on the other hand, in the form of an alliance between gov ernmc;!nt and Stock Exchange, which becomes the easier to achieve the m o re the public debt increases and the more jo int-stock compa nies concentrate in their hands not only transport but also produc tion itself, using the Stock Exchange as their centre . The latest French repu blic as well a s the United States is a striking example of this; and good old Switzerland has contri buted its share in this fi el d . B u t that a democratic republic i s n o t essential f o r this fraternal alli ance between government and Stock Exchange i s proved by Eng land and also by the new German Empire, where one cannot tell who was elevated more by universal suffrage, Bismarck or Bleich rader. And lastly, the possessing class rules directly through the m e d i u m of universal suffrage. As long a s the oppressed class, in our case, therefore, the proletariat, is not yet ripe to emancipate itself, it will in its majority regard the existing order of society as the only one poss ible . and, politically, will form the tail of the capital ist class, its extreme Left win g . To t h e extent, however, t h a t this class matures for its self-emancipation, it constitutes itself as its own
755
The Origin of Family, Private Property, and State
party and elects its own representati ves, and not those of the capi . talists. Thus, universal suffrage is the gauge of the matu nty of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the pres ent-day state; but that i s su fficien t. On the day the thermometer o f universal suffrage registers boiling point a m o n g the workers, both they and the capitalists will know what to do. The sta te, then, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies that did without it, that had no conception o f the state and state power. A t a certain stage of economic deve opm � nt, which was necessarily bound up with the cleavage of society mto
�
classes the state became a necessity owing to this cleavage. We are now r pidly approaching a stage in the developm � nt of production
�
a t which the existence o f these classes not only will have ceased to be a necessity, but will become a positive hin drance to product io n . Th ey will fall as inevitably a s they arose a t a n earlier stag e . A long . . with them the state will inevitably fall . The society that will organ
�
ise production on the basis of a free and equal ass ocia ion o f the . producers will put the whole machinery of state where It wIl I t en . . belong : into the Museum of Antiquities, by the side of the spmnmg
�
wheel and the bronze axe . Thus, from the foregoing, civilisation is that stage of develop ment of society at which division of labour, the resulting exchange between individuals, and commodity production, which combines the two, reach their complete unfoldment and revolutionise the whole h itherto existing society. Production at all former stages o f society was essentially collective and, likewise, consumption took place by the direct distribution of the products within larger or smaller communistic communities . This p roduction in common was carried on within the narrowest limits, but concomitantly the producers were masters of their proc ess of production and of their p roduct. They knew what became of the product : they consumed it, it did not leave their hands; and as long a s production was carried on on this basis, it could not g row beyond the control of the producers, and it could not raise any strange, phantom powers against them, as is the case regularly and inevitably under civilisation . B u t, slowly, division of labour crept into this process o f produc tion . It undermined the collective nature o f production and ap pro priation, it made appropriation by individuals the largely prevailing rule, and thus gave rise to exchange between individuals-how, we examined above. Gradually, the production of commodities became the dominant form. \Vith the production o f commodities, production no longer for one's own consumption but for exchange, the products necess a rily
756
The Later Engels
pass from h a n d to han d . The producer parts with his product in the course of exchange; he no longer knows what becomes of it. As soon as money, and with i t the merchant, steps in as a middleman between the producers, the p rocess of exchange becomes still more complicated, the ultimate fate of the product still more uncertain. The merchants are n umerous and none of them knows wha t the other is doing. Commodities now pass not only from hand to hand, but also from market to market . The producers have lost control of the aggregate production of the conditions of their o w n l ife, and the merchants have n o t acquired
it.
Products
and prod uction
become the playthings o f chance. B u t chance is only o n e p o l e of a n interrelation, t h e other p o l e of which is called necessity. I n nature, where chance also seems to reign, we have long ago demonstrated in each particular field the in herent necessity and regularity that asserts itself in this chance . What is true of nature holds good also for society. The more a social activity, a series of social processes, becomes too powerful for conscious human control, grows beyond h u m a n reach, the more it seems to have been left to pure chance, the m o re d o its peculiar and i n n a te laws assert themselves in this chance, as i f by natural n ecess ity. Such laws also control the fortuities of the production and exchange of commodities; t hese laws confront the individual produ cer and
exchanger as
strange
and,
in
the beginning,
even
as.
u n known powers, the nature of which must first be laboriously i nvestigated a n d ascertained. These economic laws - of commodity p roduction are modified at the different stages of development of this form of production; on the whole, however, the entire period of civilisation has been domin ated by these laws. To this day, the prod u c t is master of the producer; to this day, the total p roduction of society is regulated, not by a collectively thought-out pla n , b u t by blind laws, which operate with elemental force, in the last resort
in
the storms of periodic commercial crises . We saw above how h uman labour power became able, at a rather early stage o f development of production, to prod uce considerably more than was needed for the producer's main tenance, and h ow this stage, i n the main, coincided with that of the fi rst appearance o f the division of labour and of exchange between individual s . Now, it was not long before the great "tru th" was discovered that man, too, may be a commodity; that human power may be exchanged and utilised by converting man into a slave . l\len had barely started to engage in exchange when they themselves were exchanged. The active became a passive, whether man wan ted i t o r n o t . W i t h slavery, w h i c h reached its fullest development in civilisa tion, came the fi rst great cleavage o f society into a n exploiting and an exploited class. This cleavage has continued during the whole
The Origin of Family, Private Property, and State
757
period of civilisatio n . Slavery was the first form of exploitation, pecu liar to the world o f antiquity; i t was followed by serfdom in the l\fiddle Ages, a n d by wage labour in h1 0dern time s. These are the three great forms of servitude, characteristic of the three great epochs of civilisation; open , and, latterly, disguised slavery, are its steady companion s . T h e stage o f commodity production , with which civilisation be gan, . is marked economically by the introduction of 1 ) metal money a n d , th us, of money capital, interest and usury; 2) the merchants act ing as middlemen between producers;
3)
private ownership of land
a n d mortgage; 4) slave labour as the prevailing form of production . T h e form of the family corresponding to civilisation and under it be coming the definitely prevailing form is monogamy, the supremacy of the man over the woman, and the individual family as the eco nomic unit o f society. The cohesive force of civilised society i s the state, which in all typical periods is exclusively the state o f the ruling class, and in all cases remains essentially a machine for keeping down the oppressed, exploited class . Other marks of civilisation are : on the one hand fixation of the contrast between town and countrv as the basis of the entire division o f social labour; on the other hand, the introduction o f wills, by which the property holder is able to d ispose of his property even after his deat h . This institution, which was a direct blow a t the old gentile constitution, was unknown in Athens until the time of Solon; in Rome i t was introduced very early, but we do not know whe n .3 Among the Germans i t was introduced b y the priests in order that the good honest German might without hindrance bequeath his property to the Church. With this constitution as its foundation civilisation has accom plished things with which the old gentile society was totally unable to cope . But it accomplished them b y playing on the most sordid i nstincts and passions o f man, and by developing them a t the ex pense of all his other faculties. Naked greed has been the moving spirit of civilisation from the first day o f its existence to the present time; wealth, more wealth a n d wealth again; wealth, n o t of society, but o f this shabby individual was its sole and determining aim. I f, in the pursuit of this aim, the increasing development 3 . Lassalle's Das System der erworbe nen Rechte (System of A cquired Rights) turns, in its second part, mainly on the pro position that the Roman testament is as old as Rome it self, that in Roman history there was never "a time when testaments did not exist" : that the testament arose rather in pre-Roman times out of the cult or the dead. As a confirmed Hegelian of the old school, Lassalle derived the provisions of the Roman law not from the social conditions of the Romans,
of science and
but from the "speculative conception" of the will, and thus arrived at this totally un historic assertion. This is not to be wo ndered at in a book that from the same speculative conception draws the conclusion that the transfer of property was purely a secondary matter in Roman inheritance. Lassalle not only believes i n the illusions of Roman jurists, especially o f the earlier period, but he even excels them.
[Engels]
758
The Later Engels
repeated periods o f the fullest blooming of art fel! into its lap, it was only because without them the ample present-day achievements in the accumultion o f wealth would have been impossibl e . S ince the exploitat ion o f o n e class b y another is the b a s i s o f civili sation, its whole development moves i n a continuous contradictio n . Every advance in production i s at the same time a retrogression i n t h e condition o f t h e oppressed class, t h a t i t , o f t h e g r e a t m a j ority. vV hat i s
,1
boon for the one is necess arily a b a n e for the other; each
new emancipation of one class always means a new oppression o f another class . T h e most striking proof of this is furnished by t h e introduction of machinery, the e ff e c t s o f which are well known today. And while among barbarians, as we have seen, hardly any dis tinction could be made between rights and duties, civ ilisation makes the difference and anti thesis between these two plain even to the dullest mind by assigning to one class pretty nearly all the righ t s , a n d t o t h e other class pretty nearly a l l t h e duties . B u t this is not as it ought to b e . What is good for the ruling cla ss should be good for the whole o f the society with which the ruling class identifies itsel f. Therefore, the more civilisation ad vances, the more i t is compelled to cover the ills i t nece ssarily creates with the cloak o f love, to em bellish them, or to deny their existence; in short, to i n troduce conventional hypocrisy-unknown both i n pre vious forms o f society and even in the earliest stages of civilisation -that culminates in the declaration : The exploiting class exploits the oppressed cl ass solely and exclusively i n the interest o f the exploited class itself; a n d if the latter fails to appreciate this, and even becomes rebellious, i t thereby shows the basest ingratitude t o i t s benefactors, t h e exploiters.4 An d now, in conclusion, Morgan's verdict on civilisation : "Since the advent o f c i v ilisation, the outgrowth o f property has been so i m m ense, i t s forms so diversified, its uses so expanding and its man agement so intelligent in t h e i n terests of its owners that i t
has become, on the part of the people, an unmanageable power. T he human mind stands bewildered in the presence of its own creation.
The time will come, nevertheless, when human intelligence will rise to the m a s t ery over property, and define the relations o f the state to the property i t protects, as well as the obligations and the limits of the rights o f its owners . The interests o f society are paramount to individual i nterest, and the two must be brought into just and har4. r
had intended at the o u t s e t t o p l a c e b r i l l i a n t critique of civilisation, scattered through the works o f F o u r i e r , by t h e s i d e o f M o r g a n ' s and m y own. Unfortunately, r c a n n o t s p a r e the time. r only wish to remark that Fourier a l r e a d y c o n s i d e r e d m o n o g a m y and prop erty i n land as the main characteristics
the
o f c i v i l isation. a n d that he described it as a war o f the rich against the p oor . W e a l s o find alread y i n his w o r k the deep appreciation o f the fact that in all imperfect societies, those torn by con flicting i n terests, the i n d i v i d u a l f a m i l i e s ( les families incollerentes) are the economic u n i t s . [Ellge/s]
The Origin of Family, Private Property, and State
759
monious relation. A mere property career is not the final destiny of mankind, if progress is to be the law of the future as it has been of the past. The time which has passed away since civilisation began is but a fragment of the past duration of man's existence; and but a fragment of the ages yet to come. The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of
a
career of which property is the end
and aim, because such a career contains the elements of self-destruc tion. Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowl edge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher f or m,
o
f
the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes." (Morgan,
Ancient Society, p. 552.)
Letters on Historical Materialism FRIEDRICH ENGELS
Because of his preoccupation with
Capital
and for other reasons, Marx in
his later years failed to produce a detailed and comprehensive formulation of the materialist conception of history. Engels attempted to make good this deficiency with the sketch of the conception presented in
UtopiaI'! and Scientific.
Socialism:
and by offering clarifications on important particu
lar points in these letters. Of special note are his discussions of ideology and his effort to guard against an oversimplified interpretation of the doc trine of economic determinism in history.
To Joseph Bloch London, September 21-22,1890 According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately
determining element in history is the production and reproduction
of real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted.
Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic ele
ment is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situa
tion is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure: po litical forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., jur idical forms, and then even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas, also exercise their influence upon the course of the his
torical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their
form.
There is an interaction of all these elements in which,
amid all the endless host of accidents (that is, of things and events, whose inner connection is so remote or so impossible of proof tl)at we can regard it as non-existent, as negligible) the economic move760
Letters on Historical Materialism
761
ment finally asserts itself as necessary. Otherwise the application of the theory to any period of history one chose would be easier than the solution of a simple equation of the first degree. We make our history ourselves, but, in the first place, under very definite ass u mptions and conditions. Among these the economic ones are ultimately decisive. But the political ones, etc., and indeed even the traditions which haunt human minds also play a part, although not the decisive one. The Prussian state also arose and developed from historical, ultimately economic causes. But it could scarcely be maintained without pedantry that among the many small states of North Germany, Brandenburg was specifically deter mined by economic necessity to become the great power embodying the economic, linguistic and, after the Reformation, also the reli gious difference between North and South, and not by other ele ments as well (above all by its en tanglement with Poland, owing to
the possession of Prussia, and hence with international political rela tions-which were indeed also decisive in the formation of the Austrian dynastic power) . \Vithout making oneself ridiculous it would be a difficult thing to explain in terms of economics the exist ence of every small state in Germany, past and present, or the origin of the High German consonant shifts, which widened the geographical wall of partition , formed by the mountains from the Sudetic range to the Taunus, to the extent of a regular fissure across
all Germa n y
.
In th e second place, however, history is made in such a way that the final result always arises from conflicts between many individual wills, of which each again has been made what it is by a host of particular conditions of life. Thus there are innumerable intersect ing forces, an infinite series of parallelograms of -forces which give rise to one resultant-the historical event. This may again itself be viewed as the product of a power which works as a whole, uncon Sciously and without volition. For what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no
one w i l l ed Thus past hi sto ry proceeds in the manner of a natural process and is essentially subject to the same laws of motion. But .
from
the
fact
that
individual
wills-of
which
each
desires
what he is impelled to b y his physical constitution and external, in the last resort economic, circumstances ( either his own personal cit cumstances or those of society in general) -do not attain what they want, but are merged into a collective mean, a common resultant, it must not be concluded that their value is equal to zero. On the con trary,
each contributes to the resultant and is to this degree
involved in it.
I would furthermore ask you to stud y this theory from its original
sources and not at second-hand; it is really much easier. Marx
762
The Later Engels
hardly wrote anything in which it did not playa part. But especially The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is a most excellent example of its application. There are also many allusions in Capital. Then may I also direct you to my writings: Herr Eugen Dilhring's Revolution in Science and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classi cal German Philosoph)', in which I have given the most detailed account of historical materialism which, as far as I know, exists.
Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that the
younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. \Ve had to emphasise the main principle vis-a-vis our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to allow the other elements involved in the interaction to come into their rights. But when it was a case of pre senting a section of history, that is, of
a
practical application, it was
a different matter and there no error was possible. Unfortunately, however, it happens only too often that people think they have fully understood a new theory and can apply it without more ado from the moment they have mastered its main principles, and even those not always correctly. And I cannot exempt many of the more recent "Marxists" from this reproach, for the most amazing rubbish has been produced in this quarter, too. *
*
*
The reaction of the state power upon economic development can be one of three kinds: it can run in the same direction, and then development is more rapid; it can oppose the line of development, in which case nowadays state power in every great people will go to pieces in the long run; or it can cut off the economic development from certain paths, and prescribe certain others. This case ulti mately reduces itself to one of the two previous ones. But it is obvious that in cases two and three the political power can do great damage to the economic development and result in the squandering of great masses of energy and material.
, Then there is also the case of the conquest and brutal destruc
tion of economic resources, by which, in certain circumstances, a whole local or national economic development could formerly be ruined. Nowadays such a case usually has the opposite effect, at least among great peoples: in the long run the vanquished often gains more economically, politically and morally than the victor. Similarly with law. As soon as the new division of labour which creates professional lawyers becomes necessary, another new and independent sphere is opened up which, for all its general depend ence on production and trade, stiJI has also a special capacity for reacting upon these spheres. In a modern state, law must not only correspond to the general economic condition and be its expression, but must also be an internally coherent expression which does not,
763
Letters on Historical Materialism
owing to inner contradictions, reduce itself to nought. And in order to achieve this, the faithful reflection of economic conditions suffers increasingly. All the more so the more rarely it happens that a code of law is the blunt, unmitigated, unadulterated expression of the domination of a class-this in itself would offend the "conception of right." Even in the Code Napoleon the pure, consistent concep tion of right held by the revolutionary bourgeoisie of
1792-96 �s
already adulterated in many ways, and, in so far as it is embodied there, has daily to undergo all sorts of attenuations owing to the rising power of the proletariat. \Vhich does not prevent the Code
Napoleon from being the statute book which serves as a basis for every new code of law in every part of the world. Thus to
a
great
extent the course of the "development of right" only consists, first, in the attempt to do away with the contradictions arising from the direct translation of economic relations into legal principles, and to establish a harmonious system of law, and then in the repeated breaches made in this system by the influence and pressure of fur ther economic development, which involves it in further contradic tions. (I am speaking here only of civil law for the moment.) The reflection
0f
economic relations as legal principles is necessar
ily also a topsy-turvy one: it goes on without the person who is acting being conscious of it; the jurist imagines he is operating with
a priori propositions,
whereas
they
are
really
only
economic
reflexes; so everything is upside down. And it seems to me obvious that this inversion, which, so long as it remains unrecognised, forms what we call ideological conception, reacts in its turn upon the eco nomic basis and may, within certain limits, modify it. The basis of the law of inheritance-assuming that the stages reached in the development of the family are equal-is an economic one. Neverthe less, it would be difficult to prove, for instance, that the absolute liberty of the testator in England
and the severe restrictions
imposed upon him in France are only due in every detail to eco nomic causes. Both react back, however, on the economic sphere to a
very considerable extent, because they influence the distribution
of property. As to the realms of ideology which soar still higher in the air, reli gion, philosophy, etc., these have a preh.istoric stock, found already in existence by, and taken over in, the historic period, of what we should today call bunk. These various false conceptions of nature, of man's own being, of spirits, magic forces, etc., have for the most part only a negative economic basis; the low economic development of the prehistoric period is supplemented and also partially condi tioned and even caused by the false conceptions of nature. And even though economic necessity was the main driving force of the progressive knowledge of nature and becomes ever more so, it would
764
The Later Engels
surely be pedantic to try and find economic causes for all this primi tive nonsense. The history of science is the history of the gradual clearing away of this nonsense or of its replacement by fresh but always less absurd nonsense. The people who attend to this belong in their turn to special spheres in the division of labour and appear to themselves to be working in an independent field. And to the extent that they form an independent group within the social divi son of labour, their productions , including their errors, react back as an influence upon the whole development of society, even on its
economic development. But all the same they themselves are again under the dominating influence of economic development. In phi losophy, for instance, this can be most readily proved for the bour geois period. Hobbes was the firstmodern materialist (in the eight eenth century sense) but he was an absolutist in a period when absolute monarchy was at its height throughout the whole of Europe and when the fight of absolute monarchy versus the people was beginning in England. Locke, both in religion and politics, was
the child of the class compromise of 1688. The English deists and
their more consistent continuators, the French materialists, were the true philosophers of the bourgeoisie, the French even of the
bourgeois revolution. The German Philistine runs through German philosophy from Kant to Hegel, sometimes positively and some times negatively. But the philosophy of every epoch, since it is a definite sphere in the division of labour, has as its presupposition certain definite thought material handed down to it by its predeces sors, from which it takes its start. And that is why economically backward countries can still play first fiddle in philosophy: France in the eighteenth century compared with England, on whose philoso phy the French based themselves, and later Germany relatively to both. But in France as we]] as Germany philosophy and the general blossoming of literature at that time were the result of a rising ecoc nomic development. I consider the ultimate supremacy of economic development established in these spheres too, but it comes to pass within the conditions imposed by the particular sphere itself: in philosophy, for instance, through the operation of economic influ ences (which again generally act only under political, etc., dis guises) upon the existing philosphic material handed down by pred ecessors. Here economy creates nothing anew, but it determines the way in which the thought material found in existence is altered and further developed, and that too for the most part indirectly, for it is the political, legal and moral reflexes which exercise the greatest direct influence upon philosophy. About religion I have said what was most necessary in the last section on Feuerbach.1 1. Paul Barth, author of Hegel's Phiof History and the Hegelians
losophy
Up to 1890).
Marx and
H artmann
(Leipzig,
Letters on Historical Materialism
765
1£ therefore Barth supposes that we deny any and every reaction
of the political, etc., reflexes of the economic movement upon the
movement itself, he is simply tilting at windmills. He has only got to look at Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire, which deals almost exclu
sively with th e particular part played by political struggles and
events; of course, within their general dependence upon economic
conditions. Or Capital, the section on the working day, for instance,
where legislation, which is surely a political act, has such a trench ant effect. Or the section on the history of the bourgeoisie. (Chap ter XXIV.) Or why do we fight for the political dictatorship of the proletariat if political power is economically impotent? Force (that is, state power) is also an economic power!
But I have no time to criticise the book now. I must first get
volume III2 out and besides I think that Bernstein, .for instance,
could deal with it quite effectively.
'\That these gentlemen all lack is dialectics. They always see only here cause, there effect. That this is a hollow abstraction, that such metaphysical polar opposites exist in the real world only during crises, while the. whole vast process goes on in the form of interac
tion-though of very unequal forces, the economic movement being
by far the strongest, most primeval, most decisive-that here every thing is relative and nothing absolute.:..-this they never begin to see. Hegel has never existed for them.
To Franz Mehring London, July 14, 1893
Today is my first opportunity to thank you for the Lessing Legend you were kind enough to send me. I did not want to reply
with
a
bare formal acknowledgement of receipt of the book but
intended at the same time to tell you something about it, about its contents. Hence the delay.
I shall begin at the end-the appendix on historical material
ism,S in which you have line<;l up the main things excellently and
for any unprejudiced person convincingly. 1£ I find anything to object to it is that you give me more credit than I deserve, even i f I
count in everything which I might possibly have found out for
myself-in time-but which Marx with his more rapid coup d'mil4 and wider vision discovered much more quickly. When one has the good fortune to work for forty years with a man like Marx, one does 2. A
reference
Marx's Ca£ital.
to
Volume Three
..
of
3. Mehrin g s article "Uber den his tori schen Materialismus" ("On Historical
Materialism") was printed in 1893 as an appendix to his book Die Lessing Legende (The Lessing Legend). 4. Grasp.
766
The Later Engels
not usually get the recognition one thinks one deserves during his lifetime. Then, if the greater man dies, the lesser easily gets over rated and this seems to me to be just my case at present; history will set all this right in the end and by that time one will have qui etly turned up one's toes and not know anything any more about anything. Otherwise there is only one point lacking, which, however, Marx and I always failed to stress enough in our writings and in regard to which we are all equally 'guilty. That is to say, we all laid, and were
bound to lay, the main emphasis, in the first place, on the deriva tion of political, juridical and other ideological notions, and of actions arisng through the medium of these notions, from basic eco nomic facts. But in so doing we neglected the formal side-the ways and means by which these notions, etc., come about-for the sake of the content. This has given our adversaries a welcome opportunity for misunderstandings and distortions, of which Paul Barth is a striking example. Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker con sciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise
it simply
would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or
seeming motive forces. Because it is a process of thought !Ie derives its form as well as its content from pure thought, either his own or that of his predecessors. He works with mere thought material, which he accepts without examination as the product of thought, and does not investigate further for a more remote source independ ent of thought; indeed this is a matter of course to him, because, as all action is mediated by thought, it appears to him to be ulti mately based upon thought. The ideologist who deals with history
(history is here simply
meant to comprise all the spheres-political, juridical, philosophical, theological-belonging to society and not only to nature) thus pos sesses in every sphere of science material which has formed itself independently out of the thought of previous generations and has gone through its own independent process of development in the brains of these successive generations. True, external facts belonging to one or another sphere may have exercised a codetermining influ ence on this development, but the tacit presupposition is that these facts themselves are also only the fruits of
a
process of thought, and
so we still remain within that realm of mere thought, which appar ently has successfully digested even the hardest facts.
It is above all this appearance of an independent history of state
constitutions, of systems of law, of ideological conceptions in every separate domain that dazzles most people. If Luther and Calvin "overcome" the official Catholic religion or Hegel "overcomes" Fichte and Kant or Rousseau with his republican contrat social
Letters on Historical Materialism
767
indirectly overcomes the constitutional Montesquieu, this is a proc ess which remains within theology, philosophy or political science, represents a state in the history of these particular spheres of thought and never passes beyond the sphere of thought. And since the bourgeois illusion of the eternity and finality of capitalist pro duction has been added as well, even the overcoming of the mercan tilists by the physiocrats and Adam Smith is accounted as a sheer victory of thought; not as the reflection in thought of changed eco nomic facts but as the finally achieved correct understanding of actual conditions subsisting always and everywhere-in
fact,
if
Richard Coeur de Lion and Philip Augustus had introduced free trade instead of getting mixed up in the crusades we should have been spared five hundred years of misery and stupidity. This aspect of the matter, which
I can only indicate here, we
have all, I think, neglected more than it deserves. It is the old story:
form is always neglected at first for content. As I say, I have done that too and the mistake has always struck me only later. So I am not only far from reproaching you with this in any way-as the older of the guilty parties I certainly have no right to do so; on the contrary. But I would like all the same to draw your attention to this point for the future. Hanging together with this is the fatuous notion of the ideolo gists that because we deny an independent historical development to the various ideological spheres which play a part in history we also deny them any effect upon history. The basis of this is the common undialectical conception of cause and effect as rigidly opposite poles, the total disregarding of interaction. These gentle men often almost deliberately forget that once a historic element has been brought into the world by other, ultimately economic causes, it reacts, can react on its environment and even on the causes that have given rise to it.
*
*
*
To H. Starkenburg London, January * *
*
*
*
25, 1894
*
Men make their history themselves, but not as yet with a
collective will according to a collective plan or even in a definite, delimited given society. Their aspirations clash, and for that very reason all such societies are governed by necessity, the complement and form of appearance of which is accident. The necessity which here asserts itself athwart all accident is again ultimately economic necessity. This is where the so-called great men come in for treat ment. That such and such a man and precisely that man arises at a
768
The Later Engels
particular time in a particular country is, of course, pure chance. But cut him out and there will be a demand for a substitute, and this sub stitute will be found, good or bad, but in the long run he will be found. That Napoleon, just that particular Corsicari, should have been the military dictator whom the French Republic, exhausted by its own warfare, had rendered necessary, was chance; but that, if
a
Napoleon had been lacking, another would have filled the place, is proved by the fact that the man was always found as soon as he became necessary: Caesar, Augustus, Cromwell, etc. \Vhile Marx discovered the materialist conception of history, Thierry, Mignet, Guizot and all the English historians up to 1850 are evidence that it was being striven for, and the discovery of the same conception by Morgan proves that the time was ripe for it and that it simply
had to be discovered. So with all the other accidents, and apparent acciden�s, of his tory. The further the particular sphere which we are investigating is removed from the economic sphere and approaches that of pure abstract ideology, the more shall we find it exhibiting accidents in its development, the more will its curve run zigzag. But if you plot the average ax is of the curve, you will find that this axis will run more and more neady parallel to the axis of economic development the longer the period considered �nd the wider the field dealt with. *
*
*
Bibliographic Note The literature on classical Marxism and its founders is very large and con stantly growing. Many new studies have appeared in recent years as a result of the discovery of the early Marx and the controversy over the place of "original Marxism" in the development of Marx's thought and, more broadly, in intellectual history. This note makes no pretense to being an exhaustive guide even to the books available in English on classical Marxism. It is a small personal selection of studies that may be useful for further reading. The final part lists some works by major Marxist thinkers after Marx and Engels. (Books marked with an asterisk are available as paperbacks; the name of the paper bac'k publisher is given in parentheses.)
BIOGRAPHICAL The standard Marxist biography of Marx is *Franz Mehring, Karl Marx: The Story of His Life (New York, 1957) (Michigan). The comparable biography of Engels is Gustav Mayer, Friedrich Engels: A Biography (New York, 1936). See also Steven Marcus, Engels, Manchester and the Working Class (New York, 1971). Other biographical studies of Marx include: Otto Riihle, Karl Marx: His Life and Work (London, 1929); *Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx: His Life and Environment (New York, 1959) (Oxford); *Leopold Schwarzschild, The Red Prussian (New York, 1958) (Grossel & Dunlap); *Boris Nicolaevsky and O. Miinchen-Helfen, Karl Marx: Man and Fighter (New Yor 1975) (Penguin); and *M. Rubel and M. Mamale, Marx Without Myth: A l-hron% gical Study of His Life and Work (New York, 1975) (Harper & Row).
�
SOCIALIST THOUGHT BEFORE MARXISM On classical Marxism's background in earlier modern socialist theories: G. D. H. Cole, History of Socialist Thought, Volume I, The For€runners 1789�1850 (New York, 1953); *J. L. Talmon, The Orilfins of Totalitarian Democracy (New York, 1970) (Norton); *George Lichthelm, The Origins of Socialism (New York, 1969) (Praeger)' *Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia (Boston, 1949) (Beacon); and *Frank E. Manuel, The Prophets of Paris: Turgot, Condorcet, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Comte (New York, 1965) (Harper & Row).
THE EARLY MARX On Marxism's background in German philosophy, the interpretation of the early Marx, and the alienation theme in Marxism: *Louis Dupre, The Philo sophical Foundations of Marxism (New York, 1966) (Harcourt Brace Jovano· vich); *Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (Boston, 1960) (Beacon); WilliamJ. Brazill, The Young Hegelians (New Haven, 1970); Eugene Kamenka. The Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbac-h (New York, 1970); *Erich Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man (New York, 1961) ( U nger); *Shlomo Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (New York, 1968) (Cambridge); *Sidney Hook, From Hegel to Marx: Studies in the Intellectual Development of Karl Marx (New York, 1950) (Michigan); *N. Lobkowicz, ed., Marx and the Western World (South Bend Ind., 1967) (Notre Dame); *Louis Althusser, For Marx (New York, 1970) (V intage); and *Robert C. Tucker, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx, revised edition (New York, 1972) (Cambridge); *Bertell Oilman, Alienation: Marx's Conception oj Man in Capitalist Society (New York, 1972) (Cambridge); and *Istvan Meszaros. Marx's Theory of Alienation (New York, 1972) (Harper & Row).
769
770
Bibliographic Note HISTORICAL MATERIALISM
On classical Marxist theory in its development from 1848: G. D. H. Cole, His tory of Socialist Thought, Vol. II, Marxism and Anarchism 1850-1890 (New· York, 1954); *George Lichtheim. Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study (New York, 1961) (Praeger); *M. M. Bober, Karl Marx's Interpretation of History (New York, 1950) (Norton); *Ralf Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford, Calif., 1959) (Stanford); *Edwin R. A. Seligman, The Economic Interpretation of History (New York, 1907) (Colum· bia); Karl Korsch, Karl Marx (London, 1938); Norman Levine, The Tragic Deception: Marx Contra Engels (Oxford. England, 1975); *Robert C. Tucker, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx, revised edition (New York, 1972) (Cam· bridge); and *The Marxian Revolutionary Idea (New York, 1969) (Norton).
THE REVOLUTIONARY POLITICS OF MARX AND ENGELS On revolutionary strategy and tactics according to classical Marxism, the relations of Marxism and anarchism, and the involvement of Marx and Engels in the socialist and revolutionary politics of the middle and later nineteenth century: G. D. H. Cole, History of Socialist Thought, Vol. II, Marxism and Anarchism 1850-1890 (New York, 1954); J. Hampden Jackson, Marx, Proud" hon and European Socialism (London, 1957); * Arthur Rosenberg, Democracy and Socialism (Boston, 1965) (Beacon); *George Lichtheim, Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study (New York, 1961) (Praeger); *Robert C. Tucker, The Marxian Revolutionary Idea (New York, 1969) (Norton); Hal Draper, Marx's Theory of Revolution, 2 vols. (New York, 1977); and R. Hunt, The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, Vol. I (Pittsburgh, 1974).
MARX'S ECONOMICS
SOME LATER WORKS OF MARXISM Significant later contributions to Marxist thought include: *Karl Kautsky, The Class Struggle (New York, 1971) (Norton) and The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (Ann Arbor, 1964) (Michigan); *Eduard Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism (New York, 1961) (Schocken); Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (London, 1951), *Reform or Revolution (New York, 1970) (Path finder), and *The Russian Revolution and Leninism or Marxism? (Ann Arbor, 1961) (Michigan); Lenin, What Is to Be Done?, The State and Revolution, and other works, in *The Lenin Anthology, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York, 1975) (Norton); *Leon Trotsky, The New Course (Ann Arbor, 1965) (Mich. igan) and *The Revolution Betrayed (New York, 1937) (Pathfinder); I. V. Stalin; P roblems of Leninism (Moscow, many editions); Georg Lukacs, His tory and Class Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass., 1968); *Gajo Petrovic, Marx in the Mid-Twentieth Century: A Yugoslav Philosopher Reconsiders Karl Marx's Writings (Garden City, N.Y., 1967) (Anchor); Mihailo Markovic, The Contemporary Marx: Essays on Humanist Communism (London, 1974) and *From A/fiuence to Praxis (Ann Arbor, 1974) (Michigan); *Svetozar Stoianovic, Between Ideals and Reality: A Critique of Socialism and Its Future (New York, 1973) (Oxford); *Leszek Kolakowski, Toward a Marxist Hu" manism (New York, 1968) (Grove); and *Andre Gorz, Socialism and Revo lution (Garden City, N.Y., 1973) (Anchor).
Index
Abstraction (thinking essence), 11011, 121-24, 125 Accumulated labour in bourgeois society, 480 capital and, 98, 207-10, 2 11 -12; 224 in Communist society, 485 Activity, 85-86, 89-90 Actuahty, 120 "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League" (Marx and Engels), 501-19 Adultery, 740, 741, 742 , 743, 745, 746, 747 Aeschylus, 57 Agriculture, 347 Asian, 655-56 as basic economic category, 242-43 capitalist accumulation and! 434 -35 decline of Roman Empire and, . 152-53 feudal, 153 liberation and development o f, 169 modern industry and, 415-17 Roman conquests and, 152 Aiken, 184 Ailly, Pierre d', 614 Alexander the Great, 180 Alienated labour, see Labour, alien ated Alienation, 96, 221 class and, 133-35 economic, 85 religion and, 72, 74 , 78, 85 Allgemeine Augsburger Zeitung, 4 Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, 68n, 107n Alsace-Lorraine, 564, 619 Althusser, Louis, 136n Amalfi, 187 Amsterdam, Marx's speech in (1872), 522-24 Anarchists, 542, 54 7,728-29 Ancient Society (Morgan), 734 Anecdotis (Ruge), 68, 107 Animals, 75-76 Annenkov, P. V., 136 Annulment, 120-25 Anti-Corn Law League, 176 Anti-Diihring (Engels), 683-727 Antipatros, 406 Appearance, 10-11,120 philosophy opposed to, 11 Apprentices, feudal, 153 patriarchal relationship between masters and, 177 Aristocracy democracy and, 160 French,174 honor and loyalty under, 173 Aristotle, 9, 92, 333n-334n, 406, 694
771
Art, 8 ethical mind and, 120 as mode of production, 85 religion and, 109,119 social development and, 245-46 timeless character of, 221, 246 Asiatic mode of production,S Atelier, 536 Atheism communism and 85, 92-93 } humanism and, 120-21 as mediation, 92-93 and the state, 36 Australia, 6 Austria, 61, 570 Austro-Prussian War (1866), 621-23 Authority, 730-33 Automation, capitalism and, 221, 278-90 A vignon, 394 Babeuf, Francois Noel, 497, . 685 Bachofen, 736, 750 Bacon, Francis, 695 Baking industry, 368-70, 375 Bakunin, Mikhail, 542-48, 671, 72829 Banks, 184 Barbarians, 152-53 Barhes, Armand, 577 Barbon, Nicholas, 303n, 304n, 305 Barrat, Odilon, 572 Barter, 451i 460 Barth, Pau ,765 Bastiat, Frederic, 223, 246 Bauer, Bruno, 8n,67n, 68n, 146 on dialectic, 106-7 on Jewish question, 26-32, 35, �738,40,42, 47, 49, 51 on nature, 134, 170 polemic against, 133-35 Beaumont, Gustave d� 31n, 39 Bebel, August, 549, 506 . Being becoming as, 124 essence and, 122 natural and species-, 116 objective, 116 other-, 118 thinking and, 86 Belgium, 57 0 Bernstein, Eduard, 549,764 Big industry abolition of private property and, 190 capital determined by, 186 class created by, 185-86 communications and, 185 contradiction between means of production and private prop erty in, 189-90
772
Index
Big industry (continued) crafts destroyed by, 185 division of labour and, 185 proletariat and. 186 world history and. 186 world market and, 186
see also Industry
Birmingham 368 Bismarck, O tto von, 533-34, 540n, 559n, 560, 563-66, 572, 619, 621, 645,650 Bl acksmiths, 371-72 Blanc, Louis, 499n,587, 592n, 594 Blanqui, Louis-Auguste, 577, 592, 601,605,624,626-27,649 Bloch, Joseph, Engels' letter tc, 76062 BIos, W., 521 Bcguslawski, Gen. Albert vcn, 572 Bolte, F., 520 Bcnaparte, Louis Napoleon, 538, 586, 594--617, 618, 621, 630-31, 638,644 coup of, 558 dictatorship 'Of. 603-8, 611-17 French fcreign affairs under, 56364 overthrcw 'Of, 569n peasantr y and, 608-12 Bcna l?arte, Napoleon, 510n, 591, 768 carIcature of, by 1848 Revclution ' 596-97 Bcurbcns, dynasty 'Of, 491n,563n Bcurgeois economy ccntradictions and crises in, 450-65 technolcgy and, 290 Bcurgecisie antithesis 'Of, 684-85 attitude tcward women of, 488 civil scciety and, 163 class antagonisms o f , 474 concept 'Of freedcm 'Of, 485-87 ccnsolidation 'Of class rule 'Of, 606-7 culture 'Of, 487 definition 'Of, 473n essential cnnditicn fcr existence 'Of, 483 explcitaticn by, 475-76 family relaticns 'Of, 476,487 freedcm and equality during dcminance 'Of, 173 French, 63, 586-93, 620 German, 127-29 industrial revcluticn and, 562 under Lcuis Philippe, 603-4 in Middle Ages, 175 mcdes 'Of prcducticn and, 475-76 pclitical advances 'Of, 475-77 prcletariat revclts against. 127 repressicn 'Of peasants by, 609-10 republican secticn 'Of, 600-603 revcluticnary rcle 'Of, 474-76, 489, 532 rise frcm feudal society 'Of, 474; 476-78 in Russia, 665-75 state dependent 'On, 187 unfitness tc rule 'Of, 483 urban population and, 477 B ourgecis revolutions, 596-97
Bourgecis scciety, 16 acclJmulated labour in, 485 capItal a s eccncmic power in, 243-44 class structure in republican form cf,602 establishment 'Of, 595-96 marriage in, 741-42, 743-45, 74950 mcney in, 101-5 mediaticn functicn 'Of, 102-3 transfcrmaticn pcwer 'Of, 103-5 prcducticn and, 241-42, 252 see also Civil society Bracke, Wilhelm, 549 Bristol, 368 British E a s t India Ccmpany, 654 Buchez, Philippe, 536n Bulgaria, 570 Bureaucracy centralizaticn and, 614 in parliamentary republic, 607 as "state fcrmalism, " 23-25 Burghers, 179 chartered, 474 Byzantine Empire, 152 Cabet, Etienne, 12,13, 14n, 84, 499 Calcnne , Charles -Alexan dre de 642 ' Campan ella, Tommasc, 685n Capital, 70-71 248-49 accumul ate d labcur and, 98, 20710) 211-12 capitabst ccntained within, 276 centralizaticn 'Of, 185 changes in ccmpositicn 'Of, 422, 423,425 circulating, 278, 280, 282, 284, 286, 288-89 ccncentraticn 'Of, 180 development 'Of, 221, 250-61 eccncmic crises and, 444-65 estate, 178, 181 fixed, machinery as, 278-83. 284891 290 industrIal. 185. 336 as instrument of prcducticn, 224. 249.251-52 l a bcur related tc, 261-76 labcur supply changes and. 422-28 landed prcperty independent 'Of, 176 Icss 'Of natural character 'Of, 184 mcney as 'Origin 'Of, 269, 270-72 mcney transfcrmed into. 329-36 mcvable, 181-82 natural scienc"e and, 185 cbjectificaticn 'Of sccial labcur and. 292-93 organic ccmpositicn 'Of, 419-20 possessicns as, 87 as power 'Of ccmmunity, 83 private prcperty as. 82 productive. 211-12, 214-16 reproducticn prccess 'Of, 452-55. 457, 464-65 sale 'Of labcur-pcwer needed fur. 339 as social pcwer, 485 stockpiling 'Of, 271. 272,275 as sum 'Of exchange values. 208-10
Index
773
technology and, 284-89, 291 bourgeoisie and, 163 universal competition and, 1 86 determinants of, 137 value composition of, 419-20 family and, 1 1 9, 163 wage labour and _'209-10, 2 6 8, Hegel on, 43 .l 273-74, 483, 4lS5 man as egoist in, 2 6 , 42-43, 45-46 Capital (Marx) materialism and, 145 Foundations oj the Critique oj Po membership in! 34, 41-42, 45 litical Economy (Grundrisse) nationality a n a,163 and,221 organized as state, 163 preface to French edition of, 298political character of, 44-45 99 political economy and, 4, 101 selections from,294-441 principles o f ,50 Capitalism,203-441 relation of productive forces to, automation and, 221, 278-90 163 change in marriage choice a nd, religion i n ,35,39 748-49, 7 50-51 revolution of,44-46 commodities and, 302-29 state and, 16-1 8, 34-36, 39, 42, factors of, 302-8 45-46, 50, 119, 1 6 3 fetishism of, 319-29 Civilization and barbarism, 1 7 6 forms of value of, 3 13-19 Civil Wa r i n France, The (Marx ) , labour embodied in,308-12 618-52 division of lab our and, 2 1 1-16; see Class also Division of labour abolition of,505, 535, 593, 665 dynamics of,247-50 alienation and, 133-35 end of, 291-92 big industry as creator of, 185-86 money transformed into capital categories of,441, 442 under, 329-36 community determined by, 197 overthrow of, 22 1 , 291-92 definition of,439n, 441-42 socialism and, 700-717 French, 63-64; see also specific surplus value under, 344-419 French classes absolute, 344-76, 379 marriage and, 7 39, 742, 7 47 -48, relative,376-419 750 wages under, 204-17 in Middle Ages, 179 determination of, 206 oppressed,218 productive capital and, 2 1 1, production as determinant of, 214-16 1 60-61, 1 7 0 Capitalist accumulation, 419-38 revolutionary, 2 1 8 agriculture and, 434-35 society represented in, 6 3 composition of capital and, 419-22 str uggles, 218-19, 520, 542-43 historical tendency of, 436-38 in 1
Index
774
Commodities (continued) relative, 3 14 - 1 9 historical conditions in making of,
338
labour embodied in, 308- 1 2 use-value and, 308-9, 311 - 1 2 value and, 309-10 labour-power a s , 204-5, 3 36-43 as money, 3 36 surplus value and production
344-61
women as, 5 1 workers as , 70-71 Communal propeny,
473n
1 5 0-5 3 ,
of,
472,
of peasants, 670-72 private property and, 5 09 women as, 82-83 Communism, 66 atheism and, 92-93 dogmatic, 1 3 economic nature of, 1 9 3-200 equality as groundwork of, 99 evolution to, 1 6 2 fixation o f social activity and, 1 6 0 high level o f production and, 161-
62
humanism and, 84, 120-21 international, 1 62 local, 162 nationalism and, 488 naturalism and, 8 4 political nature of, 84 primitive, 6 6 6 private property and, 81-93 emancipation of senses and, 87-91 first annulment of, 82-84 religion and, 91-93 estrangement of transcendence and, 84-86 Proudhon's opposition to, 14 2 reactionary denunciation of, 602-3 religion and, 91-93 revolution necessitated by 1 6 8 Communistic households, 7 3 5 , 744 Communist League aims of, 484-91 founding of, 469 organization of, 5 02 relation to opposition parties of,
470, 499-500
relation to proletariat of, 4 8 3-91 Communist Manifesto (Marx and En gels), 469-500 Communist society ac'cumulated labour in, 4 85 emergence from capitalist society of, 529, 5 3 1 family and, 487-88 nationality and, 488 revolutionary transition to, 489-9 1 ,
538
state i n , 5 3 8-39 Society Communist
521
(organization),
Community class determined, 197 division of labour and, 1 60 of labour, 8 3 revolutionary, 197-98 workers' isolation from, 1 3 1
Competition colonization and, 1 82 free, 184-85 monopoly and, 70-71 universal, 1 62 big industry and, 1 8 5 capital determined by, 1 86 preservation of productive forces and, 1 8 0 proletaria t and, 1 62
Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, The (En gels),5 selection from, 579-85
Condition of the Working Class in Russia (Flerovsky), 670 Consciousness, 69, 1 09 abstract, 111 -12 abstractions and, 1 1 1
appropriation 0 f essential powers in, 1 1 1 -12 base, 1 1 1 development of, 14-1 5 , 1 5 4-55 general, 8 6 herd, 1 5 8 history and, 1 5 8-63 honest, 1 1 1 inorganic nature and, 75-77 material conditions and, 489 movement of, 1 1 4 of nations, 1 5 9 noble, 1 11 object of, 1 1 2- 3 5 annulhng, 1 20-35 self-consciousness as, 1 1 3 surmounting, 1 1 3-20 other-being and, 118 practical, 1 5 8 of proletariat, 1 34-36 sensuous, 90, 111 social bemg determines, 4-5 species, 3 3 n-34n, 86, 1 21 tribal, 1 5 8 unhappy, 1 09 Constant, Benjamin, 5 9 7 Constantine the Great, 573 Constitutions, democracy and, 20-23 Consumption colonization and, 18 3 communal, 85-86 individual, 349 means of 200 means of production and, 286, 289 production related to, 227, 228-32,
448-50, 4 5 8 , 459-65
productive, 349 social, 85-86 Contract, status vs., 748-49
Contribution to the Critique of Politi cal Economy, A (Marx), 3, 203, 294 Cooperation, 384-88 Corn, 668 Cottage industry, 1 5 3 Cotton famine ( 1 863 ) , 426n Cotton industry, 368, 3 7 5 C ousin, Victor, 595 Crafts, 185 Crises, economic, 2 1 7 , 444-65 forms of, 455-59 prices preceding, 448, 457-58
"Critical Marginal Notes on the Arti cle 'The King of Prussia and ( M a rx ) , Reform' " Social
126-32
"Critique of the Gotha Program" ( Marx ) , 525-41 Cromwell, Olivet, 596 Cuba, 3 7 4 Cuno, Theodor, Engels' letter to,
Divinity, 8 human self-consciousness as, 9 Division of labour, 70-7 1 , 1 3 6, 702-3 abolition of, 1 97 between nations, 172 b ig industry and, 1 85 capitalism and, 2 1 1 - 1 6 caste system as, 165 classes determined by, 160-61 commodities and, 3 08-9 contradictions in, 1 59-60
Economic categories, 140 Economic crises, see Crises, economic Economies, pre-capitalist, 22 1 , 261-76 Education, 487, 490 compulsory, 5 3 9-40 division of labour and, 399 of German workers, 129 of labour-power, 340 state role m, 53 9-40 of working children, 4 1 1 - 1 2 , 4 1 4-
15
Eighteen th Brumaire o f Louis Bona parte (Marx ) , 5 5 8 , 594-6 1 7
Emanclpation human, 26 natural science and, 90 political emancipation
32, 3 5 , 40, 46-47
and,
political definition of, 44 rel igion and, 28-40, 42, 45 universal 80 Encyclopedia (Hege l ) , 1 09 ,
122-23
30-
1 19,
England, see Great Britain English Labour Statutes, 376 English Revolution ( l 7th century ) ,
561
Equality defined, 42-43, 1 7 3 as groundwork o f communism, 99 i n social care of children, 746 Equivalent value, 3 1 3- 1 4 Eschenbach, Wolfram v o n , 741 Eschwege, 307
Index
776
Essence appearance and, 1 20 bemg and, 122 concept a n d , 122 existence and, 84, 1 6 8 of man, 1 1 3 measure and, 1 1 9 pseudo, 1 1 9 of religion, 1 4 5
Essence o f Christianity (Feuerbach ) , 1 08 Estates, 1 87 Estrangement, 96, 97, 99, 1 0 0 o f infinite, 1 08 knowing and, 1 1 7-18 o f man from m an , 77 of substance 1 0 8 Ethics, political economy o f , 9 7 Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx, The, 7 3 4n Eudes, General, 624 European Messenger, 299 Exceptional Law, 6 1 9
Exc hange development of, 250-61 in political-economic method, 239 produc tion related to, 227, 235-36 Exchange-value, 70 bourgeois institution of, 4 7 5 capital a s sum of, 208-10 circulation of commodities and,
3 32, 3 3 4
nature and, 328 p r i c e as, 204, 208 use-value and, 267, 27 1-7 3 , 304-5;
3 3 8, 342-43, 450-5 1 , 4 5 9
444-45,
448,
Factories division of labour in, 407-8, 412-
13
machinery in, 407-1 1 Factory Acts, 296, 365-66,
517
376, 4 1 1 ,
Family bourgeois, 476, 487 civil society and, 1 6-17, 1 1 9, 1 6 3 in Communist society, 487-88 division of labour and, 1 5 0, 1 5 9,
160
as economic unit, abolition of, 744,
745-46
history and, 1 5 6-57 , 1 5 9 matriarchal form of, 734-36 as mode of proouctlOn, 85 monogamian, 7 3 8-39, 744,
7 5 0-5 1
748,
150
704-5
181
Feuerbach, Ludwig,
1 5 , 1 6, 3 3n-34n, 5 3 , 66, 68-70, 90, 1 1 8, 1 3 6 . . communist" defined by, 167-68 on dialectic, 107-8 materialism of, 1 7 1-72 on religion, 1 44-45 on sensuousness, 1 6 9-7 1 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 7 Finance, development of, 1 84-85
First
International (Working Men's Association) , International
5 1 2, 5 1 9, 5 34, 564 Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy ( Grundrisse) ( Marx) 221-93 Fourier, Char ies, 1 3, 82, 142, 290, 497, 499n, 687-90, 707, 709, 7 1 9-20, 742 France, 57, 1 66, 6 1 8-52 aristocracy overthrown in, 1 74 Austro-Prussian War and, 621-23 bourgeoisie of, 63, 5 8 6-93 , 620 centralized administration of, 5 10n classes i n , 63-64 class struggles in ( 1 848-1850 ) , 5 86-93 division of labour in, 394 February Revolution in, 470, 5 5 8, 5 5 9-60 ' Jewish question in, 28-29 July Revolution of 1 8 3 0 in, 49 1 , 563n law of, 1 8 8 Louis
Napoleon
563
Bonaparte
and,
man ufactures in, 1 80 movement of property in, 1 6 2 Paris Commune i n , 470, 534, 5 52,
agriculture during, 1 5 3 decay of, i n France, 606 destruction of i n French Revolution, 595 ' division 0 f labour in, 1 52-54 extension of commerce and, 1 82 Gaul and, 1 5 2 industry during, 1 5 3-54, 474 nobility during, 1 5 3-54 property during, 1 8 6, 476-77 rise of bourgeoisie from, 474 town/country opposition and, 1 5 3 vagabondage and disintegration of,
623-30,
6 3 1-43, 647-50,
factionalism of, 625-27 fall of, 6 1 8 , 6 1 9 management of, 627-28 peasants in, 570, 6 1 0-- 1 1 political rights in, 4 1 proletariat of, 6 1 9 republic of, 621 Restoration i n , 563n, 5 9 1 Russia and, 6 1 9 Second Empire of, 6 2 1 ,
63 8-40
630--3 1 ,
Socialists in parliament of, 570 third es ta t e i n , 475 universal suffrage i n , 565 workers' movements i n , 128, 129,
Index Franklin, Benjamin, 3 1 6n, 345 Freedom appearance of, 29 bourgeoisie and, 1 7 3 o f conscience, 4 1 necessity and, 8 4 o f press, 44 French Revolution ( 1 7 8 9 ) borrowing o f Roman culture
595-96 a s bourgeois revolution, 606-7 see also Revolution of 1 848
machinery in, 4 1 1 - 1 5 manufacturers i n , 297 movement of property in, 1 62 pauperism in, 5 1 2-1 3 production contradictions in,
63
in,
Garantien der Harmonie und Freiheit
(Weitlin g ) , 129 Gamier, Germain, Comte d e , 399 Georgia, 374 German Ideology, The (Marx and Engels ) , 1 3 3 , 143, · 146-200 Germany, 12, 3 7 5 Anti-Socialist L a w i n , 5 5 1 , 5 52,
565-66
compulsory education in, 5 3 9 Exceptional L a w in, 5 3 3 , 5 6 5 feudal counter-revolution i n , 503 form of state i n , 1 8 7 industrialization of, 562, 565 liberal bourgeoisie i n , 502-3 Napoleon and, 172 peasants in, 5 3 6 Peasant War in, 6 1 , 6 85 petty-bourgeois class in, 4 9 5 , 5 5 3-
55
petty-bourgeois party i n , 502- 1 1 aims of, 504-5 oppositIon to, 505-1 1 political power of, 505-8 proletariat of, 64-65 revolutionary critique of, 5 3 , 54-65 Russia and, 6 1 9 socialist thought in, 126 universal suffrage i n , 565-67 urban republics in, 475 . workers' arty i n , 126-3 1 , 502-1 1 aims 0 , 5 0 5 , 509-1 1 arming of, 506-8 centralization of, 508-10 in electoral politics, 508-9 organization of, 508 - 1 0 Geschichtsphilosophie (Hegel ) , 1 7 5 Gladstone, William, 5 1 2- 1 4 Glasgow, 368 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 102-3 Gold, 1 82-84 Goodfellow, Robin, 5 7 8 G o o d 0 / Freedom, The (Bauer ) , 1 07 Government, reason for, 43-44 Great Britain, 5 7 , 98, 99, 1 6 6 , 21 8 agriculture in, 4 1 5 , 4 1 6 class structure in, 441 concentration of land ownership in,
f.
515
co-operative movement in, 5 1 8 development o f technology in, 1 3 9 ,
426
European industrial leadership
515 .
462-
reaction to European revolution by,
of,
growth of commerce and industry in, 47 1 , 5 1 2- 1 3 , 5 1 6 industrial revolution in, 690-91 industry concentrated m, 1 8 3-84 law of, 1 8 8
593
Revolution of 1 848 and, 5 1 6- 1 7 workers' political attitudes i n , 676 workers' revOlts in, 127, 1 28, 1 29 working-class conditions in, 5 1 2-1 8 working day in, 365-72 . Great men, historical role of, 767-68 Greece, 23 art of, 245-46 family in, 7 3 6, 737-39, 746 sex love in, 746 Grlin, Karl, 146, 496 Grund'risse, the ( M a rx ) , 221-93 Gruppe, Otto, 1 07 Guilds, 396-97, 474, 704 decline of, 1 82 dissolution of, 267-7 1 , 275 division of l a bour in, 1 7 8 , 474 formation of, 177 manufacture and, 1 8 2 marriage restrictions i n , 747-48 money and, 269, 272 in towns, 1 5 3 weaving and, 1 8 1 Guizot, Fran�ois, 597, 606, 6 1 7 , 768 Hamilton, Thomas, 31, 33, 49 Hassall, Dr " 368 Hasselmann, Wilhelm, 5 3 3 n Haussmann, Georges-Eugene,
639, 648
Baron,
Haxthausen, August, 47 3 , 670-71 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich,
9, 5.3, 66, 1 36, 594 on civil society, 43 dialectic o f , 68-69, 1 0 5-25, 3 0 1 -2 history by, 1 6 6 illusion seen as real b y , 237 on labour, 1 1 2 limitations of, 698 Marx's discovery of, 7-8 Philosophy 0/ Right of, 35, 337n . M a r x reviews, 4, 16-25, 3 3 , 5365, 67, 2 3 8 religion a n d , 1 1 8-1 1 9 superseding in, 1 1 9, 1 2 2 Henry V I I I of England, 1. 8 1 Heraclitus, 694 Herr Eugen Du ring's Revolution · in Science (.Anti-Diihring;) (En gels ) , 6 8 3-727 Herve, Edouard, 647 Herzen, Alexander, 671 Hess, Moses, 6 8 , 8 7 Hetaerism, 7 3 8 , 7 4 0 , 7 4 1 , 742, 7 4 3 , 745, 746 Hiatus theory, Marx i n , 1 36 Historical materialism, 3-6, 1 6 , 1 36, 760-68 History, 8 accident in, 767-68 consciousness and, 1 5 8-63 creation of new needs and, 1 5 6 . definition of, 66 development of capital in, 25 1-61
Index
778
History (continued) economic categories in, 238-44 family and, 15 6-57 , 159, 7 3 4-5 1 great men's role in, 767-68 as history of class struggles, 699 as history of production, 1 6 3-75 making of, 595 man's coming-to-be and, 1 1 6- 1 7 movement o f , 8 4 a s preparation, 9 0 process o f dissolution i n , 261-76 process of production and distribution of wealth in, 293 proletarian conception of, 1 6 6 religion and, 1 6 6 revolution as driving force of,
164-65
self-consciousness as culmination of, 1 66, 1 6 9 soci�ty and economy in, 1 3 6-42 subsistence and, 155-56 task of, 54 transformation into world history of, 1 7 2 war a s main force of, 15 0-5 1
world, 245
big industry and, 1 85 productive forces and, 1 7 2 state and, 1 1 9 Hobbes, Thomas, 3 3 9n, 764
Holy Family: A Critique of Critical Criticism, The (Marx and En gels), 1 3 3-3 5
Humanism atheism and, 1 20 communism and, 84, 120-21 idealism, materialism, and, 1 15 of nature, 85 Human requirements, meaning
Industry agriculture and, 4 15-17 commerce separate from, 154 decennial cycle i n , 423, 426 decline of Roman Empire and, 1 5 3 demand determined by, 1 7 0 development of, 5 1 2, 5 5 8 , 562 essential powers and, 89-90 expansion of markets and, 474 extractive, 3 47 in Great Britain, 1 8 3 liberation and development of, 1 69 machinery and, 403-1 5 , 721 effe cts o n workingman of, 403 i n England, 41 1 -15 factory and, 407-1 1 national 476 patriarc h al, 325-26 unemployment needed by, 424 see also Big industry; specific in
Idea absolute �on<:e.p t and, 122 mtwtmg, 122-23 nature and, 1 1 9 objectivity and, 120 nature and, 124-25 Idealism humanism and, 1 1 5 naturalism and, 1 15 i n Phenomenology, 1 1 0 reali ty and, 7 sensuous activity and, 1 4 3
Idee napoleonienne, 612-14 Imperialism, 6 3 1-32 in India, 653-64
"Inaugural Address of the Working Men's International Associa tion" (Marx), 5 1 2- 1 9 Income t a x , 490, 5 3 9 India British imperialism in, 65 3-64 communal ownership of land in,
67 1
Individual communist revolution and, 1 6 3-64 division of labour and, 1 6 0 independent, 222-23 life of, 8 6 "natural," as illusion, 222 society and, 86, 246-47 species and, 84, 262 transformed to free wage labourer,
domestic industry in, 656-57, 659 railway system i n , 661-62 social revolution in, 658, 659, 676 village system in, 657-58, 661 Indians, American, 735, 736
745, 748
International League of Peace and Freedom, 5 3 3 , 5 3 8 International Working Men's Associa tion (First International), see Workmg Men's International Associati on Invention, as business, 283 Ireland, 5 1 3 , 67 1 Irish Tenants' Right Bill, 5 1 8 Italy free population in, 152 law and private property in, 1 5 1.
52
manufactures in, 1 80 . production contradictions in,
act of production and, 73-75 estrangement of man from man and, 77-78 life of species and, 75-78 private property as result of,
77-81
roots of, 80 workers' relation to products and, 71.-74 capital related to, 261-76 change i n supply of, due t o capital,
422-28
commercial, 1 5 0 in Communist society, 529-31 community of, 8 3 comv.ulsory, 325 detail, 3 9 0-92, 399 disposable time of, 285, 286-87,
290
division of, see Division of labour embodied in commodities, 308-12 use-value a n d, 308-9, 31 1 - 1 2 value and, 309- 1 2 e n d of cal?itaiism a n d , 291 equal liabIlity to, 490 fetishism of commodities and,
3 1 9-29
Hegel on, 1 1 2 hired vs. associated, 5 1 8 industrial, 82, 1 50 instruments of, 345-49, 527 living vs. objectified, 252-5 3, 254-
61
machinery and, 278- 8 8 , 293 material vs. mental, 1 5 9, 176 nature as instrument of, 345-46 objectification of, 7 1 -72 objective conditions of, 261-76 in political-economic method, 239-
41
right of inequality in, 5 30-3 1 self-gepesis and, 1 2 1 , separated from {lroperty, 273-75 surpluS. productlvity and, 286-88 use-value and, 253, 254-55 , ' 256-
5 8 , 527
wealth and, 249-50, 525, 527
see also specific types of labour Labour Defended (Hodgskin ) , 282
Labour
movement,
economics
and
779
politics i n , 520 Labour-power buying and selling of, 3 3 6-43, 425 definition of, 3 3 6 nature and, 5 35-36 surplus value and, 249, 257-61, 5 3 5 value and, 305-8, 3 3 9-43 wages ana, 5 35 Labour process factors of, 345 use-va l ue and, 3 46-47 Lace trade, 368 Lachatre, Mau rice, 298 Lafargue, Paul, 6 8 3 Lamartine, Alphonse d e , 5 8 7 Lange, Fnednch, 5 3 4 Langua�e, 8 6 practIcal consciousness as, 1 5 8 sensuousness o f , 9 1 Laplace, Pierre, 697 Lassalle, Ferdinand, 295n, 521, 525,
527, 532-33, 549-50, 565
534-35 ,
542,
Lauderdale, Earl of, 96, 282 Law basis of, 1 87 civil, 1 87-88 general w ill and, 1 8 8 private property and, 1 87-88 liability, 541 maritime, 1 8 7 marriage and inheritance in, 743 women's position in, 744 mea ns of roduction and, 1 5 4, 2 3 5 a s mode 0 production, 85 Law o f Markets (Say ) , 443 League of the Just, 469 see also Communist League Lecomte, Gen. Claude, 643-44, 646 Ledru-Rollin, Alexandre, 499n, 5 87 Legitimists, 49 1 , 563n, 607
r
Letopisi marksizma, 542
Le Trosne, 304n, 306n Liberty definition of, 42 political, 41 political life and, 42 recol!ll i tion of, 45 Licinian agrarian law, 1 5 2 Liebknecht, Wilhelm, 542n, 5 4 7 , 5 4 9 List, Friedrich, 57 Liverpool, 368 Locke, John, 303n, 596, 695, 764 Logic as alienated th i nking, 1 1 0 natural philosophy and, 123 nature and 1 1 0 Logic (Hege 68, 1 06 , 122-23 Louis XIV o f France, 609 Louis XV of France, 6 1 7 Louis XVIII o f Franc'e, 595 Louis Philippe, King o f France, 5 3 8,
Ludwig Feuerbach and t h e E n d 0/ Classical German Philosophy (Engels ) , 143 Lumpenprolet ariat, 615-1 6 peasants as, 6 1 3
Index
780
Lumpenproletariat (continued) in Revolution o f 1 848, 601 in Society of December 10' 603 Luther, Martin, 60, 595 Mably, G abriel, 6 8 5 MacCulloch, J ohn, 3 5 6 , 3 8 3 , 406 M achinery in agriculture, 4 1 5-17 appropriation of labour b y , 278-8 8,
29 3
as automatic system, 27 8 , 2 8 8 capital and, 278-83, 423-28 contradictions in, 707-9 development of, 1 3 6 , 1 3 9, 403 division of labour and, 1 3 9 , 288 human weakness and need for, 95 labour supply changes and, 422-28 modern industry and, 403- 1 5 effects on workman of, 403-7 in England, 4 1 1 - 1 5 factory a n d , 407-1 1 in 1 7 th century, 3 9 1 workers and, 212-16 MacMahon, Marie-Edme-Patrice, 5 64,
646, 649-50
Maine, H. S., 748 Malthus, Thomas, 9 6 , 424 Malthusian theory of population, 22 1 ,
276-7 8 , 5 3 4-3 5
Man essence of Feuerbach and, 1 45 self-consciousness as, 1 1 3- 1 4 natural, 46, 1 1 5- 1 6 222 naturalism of, 85 nature as external to, 1 1 6 a s -object o f senses, 1 7 1 a s product 0 f circumstances and upbringing, 144 productive forces and nature's rela. ' tion to, 170-71 science of, 91, 1 0 1 social, 8 5 Manchester, 1 7 0 , 1 9 1 , 579-85 ,
Manifesto of
the
Communist
Party
(Marx and Engels ) , 469-500 Manufacture, 47 4 commerce eclipsed by, 1 84 concentration of capital and popu lation and, 1 8 0 division o f labour and, 1 80, 7 1 9-
20, 72 1 , 723
capitalistic character of, 397-403 detail labourer and, 390-92, 399 origins of, 3 8 8-90 society and, 392-97, 401 i n France, 1 8 0 i n Great Britain, 1 8 0 guilds and, 1 82 movable capital and, 1 8 1-82 protection of, 1 82-85 relationship between worker and employer in, 1 8 2 rise o f , 274-75 vagabondage and, 1 8 1 Markets expansion of, 474-77 industrial production and, 474 rise of bourgeoisie and. 474,
476-77
world, 475-77
big industry and, 1 85 crises in, 443-65 enslave ment by, 1 6 3 Marko vsky, 6 3 8 Marras t, Arman d, 596 Marria ge, 82, 686 bourgeois, 741-42, 743-45, 749-50 class and choice of p artner in, 742,
747-48, 7 5 0
a s contract, 748-50 of convenience, 739,
741, 742, 747-48, 749, 7 5 0 econom ic basis of, 7 3 5-36, 7 3 9-40, 742, 7 4 3 , 745, 748, 7 5 0-5 1 as first class oppression, 7 39 group, 7 34, 744, 745, 748, 7 5 0 monog amian, 7 3 8-43� 750-5 1 origin of, 7 34-35 pairing , 7 3 4 , 744-45 , 748, 7 5 0 sex love i n , a s right, 7 5 0 s e x love vs., 742, 746, 747-48
see also Wome n Massachusetts, 376 Masters, feudal, 1 5 3 , 1 77-7 8 , 1 82 M atch industry, 368-69 Materialism basic principle of, 1 08 communist, 1 7 1 contemplative, 1 4 5 Engels o n , 760-67 of Feuerbach, 1 7 1-72 historical, 3-6, 1 6, 767-68 humanism and. 1 1 5 lack o f subjectivity in, 1 4 3 man a s product of circumstances in 144 natural ism and, 1 1 5-16 spiritu alism and, 89 Materialist method applied to Revolu. tion of 1 848, 557-58 Matrilineal theory of society, 7 34, 7 3 5 Maurer, Georg Ludwig von, 320n,
473n
Means o f prodUc tion concen tration of, 703 development of consciousness a n d ,
1 5 4-55
division of labour and, 1 50-51 l a w and, 1 5 4 morality and, 1 54 nature of individuals and, 1 50 politics and, 1 54 preserv ation of, 1 8 0 proleta rian approp riation of, 5 5 9 relation s between nations a n d'
modern, property relationships . . abOlished in, 7 50-51 ongm of, 734-39 sex love vs., 742, 746, 747 for women o11:ly, 7 3 8-45 see also Marnage Monopoly competition and, 70-71 German, 57-58 Montesq uieu, Charles de Secondat , Baron de, 6 3 3 Morality, 725-27 family and, 1 1 9 m�ans o f p.r oductio n and, 1 54 mlOd certam of itself a.s, 109
a s m o d e of production, 8 5 private right and, 1 1 9-20 More, Thomas, 685n Morelly, 68 5 Morgan, Lewis H., 473n. 7 3 4,
768 Morning Star, 3 7 1
759,
"Mountain," in French politics ' 5 9 4 Mi.inzer, Thomas, 50, 6 8 5
National, 587
Nations consciousness of, 1 5 9 division o f labour between, 1 7 2 free competition inside, 184-85 manufactures and competition between, 1 8 1-83 relations between dependence, 162, 476-77 productive forces and, I S O-5 1 ,
172
transition from loc'ality to 176 Naturalism communism and, 84 idealism, materialism and, 1 1 5 o f man, 8 5 Natural science, 120 capital and, 1 8 5 foundations of, 695 human emancipation and, 90 industry and, 1 7 1 science of m a n and, 9 1 Nature, 8 absolute idea and, 120 abstract, 106 anthropological, 90 Bauer on, 1 7 0 ethical mind and, 120 exchange-value and, 328 as external to man, 1 1 6 externality of, 125 history a n d man's relation to, 165 humanism o f . 8 5 human use of, 8 8 Idea and, 124-25 inorganic, 7 5 as instrument of labour, 346-47 intuiting, 123 Judaism a n d , 50-51 labour belongs to, 78 labour-power and, 525-26 logic and, 1 10 man's first impression of 1 5 8 man/woman relations a � d 83-84 produ,ctive forces and ma n's relation to, 170-71 science proceeds from, 90 sensuous, 125 human sensuousness and, 91 ,,!orkers' relation t o , 72, 74 SOCial m a n a n d , 85 a s thought entity, 1 1 1 use-value and, 525-26 Necessity and freedom, 439-41 Need, 88, 90, 1 5 5-56 human vs. animal, 94-95 increase of, 93-95 refinement of, 94, 9 6 , 98 workers' vs. the rich, 98 Negation of the negation annulment of abstraction as, 122 conununism as, 99 '
782
Index
Negation of the negation (continued) as confirmation of pseudo-essence, .
Philosophy character masks of, 1 1 German, 58-59 Hegelian, transforming
9-1 1 natural 1 2 3
natura i' sciences a n d , 9 0 religion a n d , 1 0 8 resolution in empirical
world
fact
to,
of,
170-71 of right, 4, 1 6-25, 33, 35, 5 3-65 , 67 speculative, 1 6 task of, 5 4 , 6 5 Philosophy 0 1 the Future, The (Feuerbach ) , 1 07 Philosophy 01 Poverty, The ( P rou dhon ) , 1 3 6 Philosophy 01 Right, T h e (Hegel ) , 16-25, 5 3-65, 1 1 9, 2 38, 3 37n, 598n Physiocrats, 240 Pietri, Joseph Marie, 642 Pinto, 1 84 Plato, 401
Poetry, Marx on, 7 Poland, 5 6 3 Political centralization, 477 , 509-10 Political economy alienated labour and, 70-8 1 act of production and, 7 3-75 estrangement of man from man and 77-78 life of species and, 75-78 private property as result of,
77-8 1
80
roots of ! workers relation to products and, 7 1 -74 division of labour in, 1 0 1 ethics of, 97 humanness in, 9 1 method of, 2 3 6-44 as science of wealth, 9 5 a.s .unity o f labou,r and capital, 9 8 PolItIcal state, anCIent, medieval, a nd modern, 21-23
Index Polygamy, 7 37, 745 Poor relief, 529 Population, 221 , 276-78 decline in, 1 5 3 distribution of, 490 increase of, 1 5 0 division o f labour and , 1 5 8-59 war and, 1 5 2 working conditions and, 3 7 5 . manufactures a n d concentratlons of, 1 80 in political-econ omy method, 236-
Power ( s ) essential, 88-91 appropriation of, 1 1 1-12 industry a n d, 89-90 self-consciousness and, 1 1 4 sensuous 9 1 political, 490-91 class struggle and, 1 6 1 conditions for, 3 1 , 4 1 separation of, 1 7 3 Prices, 205 cost of production and, 206 as exchange value, 204, 208 Priests, domination of, 6 1 3 Primitive accumulat ion, 4 3 1-34 "Principles of Communis m, The" (Engels) , 469 Private property abolition of, 485-87, 5 05 big industry and, 190 by communist revolution, 1 6 3 b y state, 3 3 , 3 6 annulment of, 120-21 capital as, 82 civil law develops with, 1 8 7-88 commun al property a n d , 509 communis m and, 8 1 -93 emancipation of senses and, 87-
91
first annulment of private prop erty and, 82-84 religion and, 9 1-93 transcendence of estrangement and, 84-86 division of labour and, 1 60 190 falDlly and, 1 5 9-60, 7 3 9 general nature o f , 80-81 historical necessity of, 8 5 human needs and, 93-94 idea of, 99 immovable, 1 5 1 liberation of, 102 movable. 1 5 1 , 1 8 6 movement of, 84-86 nature and, 50 political form of 33 preserva tion o f proletari at and, ,
1 34-35
as presupposition of political state,
3'
783
a s result o f alienated labour, 77-8 1 right of, 42, 45 rise of socialist teachings and, 1 3 Roman concentratio n of, 1 5 2 town/cou ntry antagonis m and, 1 7 6 wages and, 7 9 women as, 82 Production act of, 73-75 ancient mode of, 5 Asiatic mode of, 5 as basic category, 221, 224 as basis of revolutionar y theory, bourgeois mode of, 476-77 bou rgeois society and, 241 capital formation and. 250-61 categories related to, 227-36 civilized instruments of, 1 8 9 class determined by, 170 division of labour and, 160-61 class struggle and, 220 conquests and, 233, 234-35 consumption related to, 448-50,
458, 459-65
demand determines, 1 7 0 distribution a n d , 5 3 1 -32 division of labour and, 1 5 1-154 commerce a n d , 1 7 8-79 communal ownership and, 1 5 1-
general precon ditions of, 225, 226 high level of, 1 6 1-62 history of, I l l , 1 64-75 increase in, 7 1-72 intellectual dominance and control of, I72-73 machinery in, 278-83, 2'84, 287,
290, 29 1 , 293
means of, see Means of production movement of, 8 5 natural instruments of, 1 8 9 over-, 443-65, 4 7 8 , 493 pre-capitalist, 261-76 relations of, 4-5 slavery as base of, 1 52 in stages of social development,
223-26, 234
technology in, capital and wealth increased by, 423 , 425 , 428 ' see also Labour, alienated Productive forces, role of, 1 3 7-38,
Proletarian revolution , 66, 1 9 1-93, 676-77, 7 1 7 nature of, 597-98 overthrow of parliament ary repub lic and, 606 Proletariat appropriatio n of means of produc tion by, 5 5 9 arming of, 5 6 8-69
Index
784
Proletaria t (continue d) big industry and, 1 86 bourgeois ideologists in 4 8 1 a s class "for itself " il 8 a s commodity, 479 conceptio n of history of 1 6 6 ' condi � ions of, 482, 4 8 3 conscious ness of, 1 34-35 definition of, 47 3n destructio n of private property and ' 1 3 3- 3 4 , dictatorship of, 220, 5 3 8 , 5 4 2 division of labou r a n d , 479, 493 domination of women by, 744 factory organization of, 479 failure t o revolt in 1 8 5 1 , following Bonaparte's dictatorship, 605 German, 64-65, 1 27-31 industrial revolution and, 562, 564 international nature of, 482, 484, 5 3 3-34 lower middle class sinks into, 47980, 482 machinery and, 479-80, 493 in Middle Ages, 1 7 9 national struggles o f , 4 8 2 , 484, 5 3 3- 3 4 relation to communists of, 48 3-85 revolution by, 53, 66, 1 27 , 1 9 1 -93 i n Revolution o f 1 84 8 , 586-9 3 , 600-601 482-83, class, revolutionary as 532-33 ruling class elements in , 4 8 1 , 55455 in Russia, 665 self-conscious nature of, 4 8 2 s e x love v s . mono gamy for 742-43 trade union organization o f, 480- 8 1 effect o f communication o n , 4 8 1 legislative recognition of, 4 8 1 united opposition to, 602 wages of, 480 world competition and, 1 62 Property, 1 8 6-93 alien, 254, 260-6 1 , 267 based o n labour and e x chan ge, 1 7 6 communal, s e e Communal property feudal ownership of, 1 5 2-54 , 1 8 6 first form of, 1 86 , 226 in France, 1 62 in G reat B ritain 1 62 monogamy an d , 7 3 5-36,. 7 3 9-40, 742, 7 4 3 , 748, 749 pre-capitalist, 261-7 6 private, see Private property protection of, 226 relation of state to, 1 8 6-88 tribal ownership of, 1 5 1 1 5 3 1 8 6 ' ' Prostituti on, 7 3 8 , 7 3 9 740 , 7 4 5 , 746 ' wifehoo d as, 742 Proudhon , Pierre-Jo seph, 6, 1 3 . 7 980, 82, 99, 129, 1 3 6-42," 22 3 ' 243, 246-47, 5 34, 547, 6 9 3 Prussia, 2 2 Purchase a n d sale, i n crises, 445-55, 456, 457, 460, 464-65 .
Quesnay, Fran!;ois, 3 8 3
R a fft e s , S i r Stamford, 654 Raspail, Fran!rois 577 Raw material, 34 5 , 347-48, 354, 5 3 1 Reality i n political-economic method, 23738 sensuo us, 1 1 1 Reason, 1 09 development of, 14-1 5 as measure of everything, 6 8 3-84, 686 unreason a n d , 1 1 8 Reformation, 60-6 1 , 685 Rejorme, La, 126 Rejormistes, 499 Relationships, range of, 2 4 4 Religion absolute knowledge and, 1 20 alienation in, 72, 74, 7 8 , 8 5 , 144 a·mulment of, 1 20 art and, 1 1 0, 1 20 in civil society, 3 5 , 3 9 communism and, 9 1-93 consciousness and. 1 3- 1 4 essence o f , 1 4 5 freedom o f conscience and, 540 Hegel on, 1 6, 1 1 8- 1 9 i n Hegel's Phenomenology, 1 1 1 history and, 1 66 human obj ectification and, 1 1 1 means of production and, 1 54 as mode of production, 8 5 monogamy and, 741-42, 7 4 9 , 7 5 1 natural, 1 09 , 1 5 8 negating and reestablishing, 1 1 9 Paris Comm une and, 623-2 4 philosophy a n d , 8 , 107-8 political emancipation and, 28-40, 42, 45 as premise of all cri ticism, 53-54 , 60 privileged, 2 9 , 3 9 revealed, 1 0 9 right to practice, 4 1 secular bases of, 1 44 socialism and, 92-93 as spiritual entity, 1 1 1 a s stage o f developm ent, 28 state a n d political, 3 9 recognized, 2 6 - 3 8 , 4 0 , 59-65 i n United States, 3 0-3 1 Young Hegelians and, 1 4 8-49 Rent, ground as b asic economic category, 242-43 as form of distribution, 2 3 2 Republican government, 1 9, 21-22, 23 Revolution �lIrgeois, 596-97 citizens' guards in, 567-68 classes and, 63 communi st, 1 68 conditions for, 1 64-65 condition s after, 542-48 as driving force of history, 1 64 economic structure and, 4-5, 1 6465 individuals and, 1 6 3-64 military in, 567-69
785
Index minority, 560-61 movement toward, 2 1 8- 1 9 nature of, f o r Russia,
radical, 5 3 right to, 5 7 1 social v s , political,
1 3 1-32
126,
129-30,
street fighting in, 567-70, 572 traditional outcome of, 560-62 universal, 1 62 Europocentric, 676-77
Revolution, Die, 5 9 4 Revolution o f 1 848, 577-78, 5 8 6 borrowing from 1 78 9 Revolution by, 595-97
bourgeoisie in, resistance to prole tariat by, 58 6-9 3, 603-4 bourgeois monarchy in, 601 bourgeois republicanism in, 600-
603
bourgeois republic as result of, 562 Constituent National Assembly of,
5 9 9, 601-3
December peasant insurrection of,
591
defeat of, 560 effect on Europe of, 5 89, 592, 593 February period of, 586-89, 597,
599
J u n e Insurrection i n , 590-9 1 , 601-
3
Legislative
599
National
Assembly
of,
National Guard i n , disbanding of,
603-4, 605
p arliamentary republic i n , 603 Russian intervention i n , 47 1 , 5 1 6 world trade crisis o f 1 847 and, 5 5 8 Revolutionary class, 1 7 3-74 bourgeoisie as, 474-76, 489, 5 3 2 lower middle class a s , 479-80, 482,
532
.
.
proletariat a s , 482-83, 532-33 ruling class elements as, 5 54-55
Royer-Collard, Pierre-Paul, 5 9 5 Ruge, Arnold, 12-1 5 , 68n, 1 2 6 Ruling class division of labour in, 1 7 3 feudal, 1 5 3-54 marriage restrictions for, 7 5 0 as ruling intellectual force, 1 7 2-75 of, self-affirmation in alienation
1 3 3-34
Rumania, 365, 5 7 0 Russia bourgeoisie in, 665-75 France and, 4 7 1 , 5 1 6 , 6 1 9 labour a s abstraction in, 241 l a n d ownership i n , 472, 473n peasants i n , 667-68 power of state in, 660 revolution in, 668-69, 673-75 socialists in parliament of, 570 social relations in, 674-75 workers in, 670 Rutenberg, Adolf, 8 Saint-Just, Louis de, 5 9 5 Saint-Simon, Claude Henri, Comte de, 82, 497, 547, 685, 687-89,
Schaper, von, 3 Schramm, Gen, Jean Paul, 549 Schulze-Delitzsch, Franz, 295n Schweitzer, Johann Baptist, 550 Science, 8 basic principle of, 1 08 of man, 9 1 1 02 as mode of production, 8 5 natural, s e e Natural science nature and, 90 productive forces affected by, 2 8 1 -
8 2 , 283, 2 8 4 , 2 9 1
as unity between people, 28 Scotland, 3 7 2 , 375 Second Empire, 62 1 , 63 1 -32, 6 3 8-40 Self-affirmation in contradiction with itself, 1 1 8 objectification and,· 84 o f rulin� class, 1 33-34 . Self-conscIOu sness, 69, 9 9 abstraction s and, 1 1 1 Bauer on, 106-7 as culmination of history, 9, 166,
169
a s divinity, 9 essence of m an as, 1 1 3 essential powers and, 1 1 3 externalizati on of, 1 1 4, 1 1 7-1 8 fallacy in theory of, 1 6 4 in Hegel's Phenomenology, .
1 1 1-12
1 09 ,
a s object o f consciousness, 1 1 2-1 3 objectivity and, 1 1 3 other-being and, 1 1 8 philosophic al systems related to, 1 0 resolution into empirical fact, 1 7 0
786
Index
Self-consciousness (continued) subject as, 1 1 1 thing hood and, 1 1 4-17 Self -denial, 95-96, 97 Self-estrangement, 66, 73-76, 82, 8486 Senior, Nassau, 3 8 3, 4 1 2, 5 1 7 Sense-certainty, 1 0 8 , 1 7 0 Senses emancipation of, 87-88 human, 1 6 6 m a n a s object of, 1 7 1 as spiritual entity, 1 1 1 Sensuousness, 98 abstractions and, 1 1 1 as essence of nature, 125 of Feuerbach, 1 4 4 , 169-71 history of productive forces and, 170 idealism and, 1 4 3 suffering and, 1 1 6 Serfs, 1 5 3 , 483 compulsory labour of, 325 early family structure and, 7 37 labour-power of, 205 liberation of, 169 towns formed by free, 1 7 6-77 tr ansition to chartered burghers of, 47 4 Services as living labour, 256-57 as wage-labour, 444-45 Sex love, 7 3 4, 7 3 9 development of, 7 4 1 , 746, 749 freedom of choice in, 749 in marriage, as right, 7 5 0 i n modern monogamy, 7 5 0-5 1 new moral standard for, 747, 7 5 1 for oppressed classes, 742, 748 Shakespeare, William, 1 02-4, 245 Silesian weavers' uprising ( 1 844 ) , 126-29, 1 3 1 Silver, 1 82-84 Sismondi, Jean-Charles de, 1 90, 342, 465 , 493 Slavery abolition of 1 69 as base o ¥ production, 1 52, 250, 254, 255 communal ownership and, 1 5 1 cooperation dependent on, 387 in Italy, 1 52 latent in family, 1 5 9-60, 1 6 1 love partners allowed in, 746 Roman family and, 737 tribal ownership and, 1 5 1 women in, 7 3 8 , 745 Smith, Adam, 1 3 9, 222, 225, 240, 261 , 272, 3 9 1 , 394, 399, 4 3 1 , 459 Social Democratic party, German, 493-96, 525, 555, 565-67, 57 1-72 Socialism, 683.-7 1 7 bourgeois, 496-97, 684-87 capitalism and, 700-7 1 7 conservative, 49&-97 critical-utopian, 497-99 in Germany, 126-32, 493-96 parliamentary representation of, 570 poverty and, 5 3 5
reactionary, 491-96 Christian, 492 feudal, 491-92 German, 493-96 petty-bourgeois, 492-93 "true," 493-96 religion and, 92-93 rise of, 1 3 scientific, 694-700 sentimental, 1 42 stigmatization of liberal reform as, 602-3 universal suffrage and, 565-67, 570 . utopian, 687-94 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (Engels ) , 683-7 1 7 "Socialist Movement i n G ermany in Retrospect, The" ( Hochberg, Bernstein, Schramm ) , 549 Society bourgeois, see Bourgeois society civil, see Civil society classless, 218-19, 220, 505, 5 3 5, 556, 665 communal, 223 Communist, see Communist society defined, 1 3 6, 221 , 439, 44 1-42 individual and, 86, 246-47 prehistory and, 5, 1 5 6, 4 7 3 n, 7 3 4 state and, 537-39 Society of December 10, in Revolu tion of 1 848, 603, 608 as Bonapar te's personal army, 6 1 3 upper stratum of, 6 1 6 Soil, loss 0 f fertility of, 4 1 6 - 1 7 Soltykov, A . D . , 6 6 3 Sovereignty, as feature of state, 1 81 9 , 25 Spain, universal suffrage in, 565 Species-being, 3 3 n, 34-35, 39, 43, 46, 262 death and, 86 manifestation as, 1 1 2 natural being and, 1 1 6 p r oduction and, 75-78 Species-consciousness, 3 3n-34n, 86, 121 Species-life, 3 3 , 36, 3 7 , 4 3 , 121 Specul ative philosophy, Hegelian political philosophy as, 1 6 Spinoza, B aruch, 228, 694 Spirit, absolute, 121 Starkenburg, H . , 767 State annulment of, 84 atheistic, 3 6 Christian, 36-39 civil society and, 16- 1 8, 34-36, 39, 42, 45-46, 50, 1 1 9, 1 6 3 in Communist society, 5 3 8-39 constitutional, 30 democratic, 36-37, 39 dependence on bourgeoisie o f , 1 87 division of labour and, 1 60 education and, 5 3 9-40 imperfect, 36-37 as mode of production, 85 oppression by, 628 origin of, 7 34-59 overthrow of, 1 6 3 ; see also Revolu tion
Index in parliamentary republic, 607 perfect, 36-37 political, 3 1-34 abstraction of, 22 civil society and, 34-36, 39, 42, 45-46, 5 0 religion In, 3 9 private property abolished by, 3 3 , 36 reason and, 1 4 relation o f pro l?e rty to, 1 8 6-88 religion recognized in, 29-38 , 40 in Revolution of 1 848, 597 roots of, 4-5 Russian, natUre of, 666-68 society and, 537-39 transition from tribe to, 176 world history and, 1 1 9 "State formalism," 23 Statehood and Anarchy ( B akunin ) , 542 Steuart, Sir James, 222, 258 Stirner, Max, 1 46, 1 4 8 , 1 66-68, 1 7 5 , 547 Storch, Heinrich Friedrich, 2 3 1 Strauss, David Friedrich, 106, 147-48 Strousberg, 5 52 Substance, 108, 1 5 5- 1 56, 1 7 0 Suffering, 8 9 , 1 1 5 Suffrage, universal, 5 99 socialist use of, 565-67, 570 Supply and demand, see Demand Surplus-value absolute, 344-76, 379 labour process a n d, 248-49, 344-51 production of, 3 5 1-61 relative and, . 4 17-1 9 working day and, 361-7 6 a s basis of capitalism, 7 00 capitalism as drive for, 221 , 247-50 circulation of commodities and, 3 32, 3 34-35 labour-power and, 5 3 5 relative, 376-419 absolute and, 4 1 7-19 cooperation and, 384-88 definition of, 376-84 division of labour, manufact ure and, 388-403 machinery, modern industry and, 403- 15 Switzerland federative republic of, 503 free education i n , 539 socialists in parliament of, 570 universal suffrage in, 565 Syno ptics (Bauer) , 1 06-7 ,
Tariffs, 57, 1 8 3 Taxation, 5 3 9 o f French peas antry, 6 1 2 of Russian p'easants, 667 Ten Hours' Bill, 5 1 7 Terrorism, 507, 509 Theoretical mechanics, 1 84-85 Theories of Surplus Value (Marx) , 443 Theory realization of, 60-61 , 65 revolutionary, 1 6 4
787
Thesen zur Reform der Philoso phie ( Feuerbach ) , 68 Theses (Feuerbach) , 1 07 "Theses on Feuerbach" (Marx ) , 143-45 Thiers, Adolphe, 622, 624, 6 3 1 , 6 3 8 , 640-51 Thinghood, 1 1 4-17 Thinking alienated, 1 1 0-1 1 being and, 86 practice isolated from, 144 Thomas , Clement , 643-44, 646 Thornton, W. y, 340n Tkachov , Pyotr, 665, 670, 6 7 1 Tocquevi lle, Alexis de, 3 1 Torrens, R., 340n Towns as associations, 1 7 7 country vs . , 1 50-5 1 , 477 division of labour and, 176-80, 1 8 5 , 393 7 1 8-20, 722-24 feuda lism and, 1 5 3 guilds in, 1 5 3 mari time, 1 8 4 in Middle Ages, 176-79 Trade, see Commerce Trade unions, 480-81 Transfonnational criticism, 16 Tremenheere, H . S., 368 Tribe. 176 consciousness of, 158 ownership in, 1 5 1 , 153, 186 Trochu, Louis-Jules, 649 Turks, 1 52 Twenty-One Sheets (Hess) , 87 Un-being, 1 1 6 Unfreedom , democrac y of, 22 U nited States agriculture in, 4 1 5-16, 417 bourgeois re p ublic in, 602 Christianity In 49 ,! Civil War In, :> 1 3 development o f machinery in, 1 3 9 European proletariat migration to, 47 1 form of state in, 1 8 7 free education i n , 539-40 International Working Men's Association in, 52 3-24 labour as abstraction in, 241 political rights in, 31, 40-41 politics in, 627-28 property qualifications in, 3 3 Ure, Andrew, 3 8 3 , 402-3, 5 1 7 Use-value, 3 5 1 circulation o f commodities and, . 331-35 exchange-value and, 267, 271-7 3 , 338, 342-4 3 , 444-45, 448, 450-5 1 , 4 5 9 a s factor of commodities, 302-8 fetishism of commodities and, 3 1 9-21 labour embodied in commodities an d, 308-9, 3 1 1-12 labour process and, 253, 254-55, 256-58, 346-47 machinery and, 279-82, 288-89, 291
Index
788
Use-value (continued) nature and, 525-26 Usury, 269, 272, 667-68 Vaillant, 625 . Valentin, J . B . P., 642 Value of commodities, 3 1 3- 1 9 equivalent, 3 1 3- 1 4 productiveness o f labour
as slaves, 7 3 8 , 745 Workers alienated labour and, 70-81 act of production an d , 7 3-75 estrangement of man from man
268,
255-56,
individual transformed for, 267-68 peasant replaced by, 4 1 6 see also Labour Wage Labour and Capital (Marx ) , 6,
203-17
Wages, 70, 203-17 changes in, industrial reserve army
and, 426-27
cost of production and, 204-6 determination of, 206-7 as form of distribution, 232-33 i n crease in, 42 3 , 428 minimum, 485 private �roperty and, 7 9 p roductIve capItal and, 2 1 1 - 1 6 profit and, 2 1 1 Wales, 372, 375 Walkley, Mary Anne, 3 7 1 War as m a i n force of history, 1 1 5- 1 6 naval, 1 8 3 population increase and, 1 52 Wars of Liberation ( 1 8 1 3 ) , 1 72 Wealth depreciation of capital and, 2 1 1 distribution laws of, . 293 monogamy and. 735-36, 73 9-4. 0,
742, 743, 745, 748
744
monogamy as oppression of, 7 3 8as private property, 82 sex love in marri age for, as right,
Wad e, Benj amin F., 297 Wage labour capital related to, 209-10, definition o f , 2 5 4 as indirect slavery,
Weydemeyer, Joseph, 220 Will, general, 1 8 8 William I o f Prussia, 5 59n Women bourgeois attitude toward, 4 8 8 a s commodities, 5 1 a s communal property, 82, 83 communist attitude toward, 488 early supremacy o f , 7 3 5 a s first oppressed class, 7 39 Fourier on, 690 labour of, 404, 405 , 479, 540, 693 legal rights in marriage of, 744 male domination of, 7 3 6-45, 7 5 1 marriage and, 7 3 5-5 1 men's relation to, 83-84, 7 3 6 modern domestic enslavement of,
national, as concept, 244 technology and, 284-89 Weaving, 1 8Q--8.1 Wedgwood, Josiah, 375 Weitling, Wilhelm, 13, 6 8 , 129, 693 Wesen des Christen/ums, Das (Feuerbach ) , 1 4 3 West Indies, 374 Westphalen, Jenny v o n , 7, 8
and, 77-78
life of species and, 75-78 private property as result
77-81
of,
roots of, 80 workers' relat ion to products and, 7 1 -74 children as, 368-69, 376, 404, 405 ,
4 1 1-12, 4 1 4, 487-88, 490, 54 1 , 693 a s commodities, 70-7 1 interest of capitalist and, 2 1 0- 1 1 , 216 machinery and, see Machinery manufacture and, see Man ufacture nature and, 72-74
relationship to means of production
of, 7 3
revolutionary struggle of, 522 universal emancipation and, 80 women as, 404-5, 479 , 540-4 1 , 693 see also Prod uction Working day, 248-49, 3 6 1 -76, 520 English, 365-72 greed and, 364-68 limits of, 361-64 normal, 373-76 prolongation of, 404-7 relay system and, 372-73 Working Men's International Associa tion (First International ) , 5 1 2,
5 1 9, 522, 534, 564, 682
Wright, Arthur, 7 3 5 Xenophon, 4 0 1 Young
Hegelianism,
48
8n,
107,
polemic against, 1 3 3-35 religious concepts a n d , 148-49 Zasulich, Vera, 675
